


Fried Eggs and Honey

by autiotalo (orphan_account)



Category: Rammstein
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-28
Updated: 2010-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:30:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/autiotalo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Feeling B are just becoming established, but Paul wants more. He doesn't know exactly what it is that he wants, though - not until he meets the shy, mysterious Till.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. all things are quite silent

The village was swallowed up by darkness within five minutes. Out here it always surprised me at how quickly one could leave civilisation behind and be in the middle of nowhere. In Berlin, even on the outskirts, you would still be somewhere. But catch the train out to Schwerin and amongst the lakes, and it was another world.

Flake and I had seen plenty of countryside as we drove from one gig to another. The Mecklenburg scenery didn't bother me so much from the confines of Aljoscha's van. It was safe, behind glass, glimpsed through a heat-haze or from the side of the road; it was something I looked at to stave off boredom as we passed by on the way to yet another concert in yet another field.

I didn't mind the beach concerts at Hiddensee – that was different, not least because Aljoscha became nostalgic for his childhood – and besides, I had my own fond memories of Hiddensee: the lighthouse, the woods where we'd unroll our sleeping bags, the trawl for driftwood so we could build a fire, and the inevitable drunken jamming and impromptu concerts that followed.

I like the beach. And it's not that I dislike the countryside. It's just that I prefer the city. You always know where you are in the city. In the country, unless there's a really obvious landmark, then you have to rely on things like cows and woods to point you in the right direction. And cows have a tendency to move, and trees all look the same to me.

And of course in the dark, you can't see where you're going at all… Which was why I'd wanted to catch a taxi from the village, but Flake had complained that he didn't have enough money, and said we should walk instead, because it wasn't far. Flake has really great ideas sometimes. This was not one of them.

At some point over the last week, someone somewhere had invited us to a party. We had no idea where we were going, or even who'd invited us, but we had the address and some vague directions, and that was enough. We'd followed the road out of Hohen Viecheln, where the buildings were just shapes in the dark, the church tower the only recognisable thing in the village; and then we'd heard the distant thump of a bass-line.

Like rats following the Pied Piper, we hurried in the direction of the music. The road forked, and so after a moment's disagreement we took the right-hand track. The track disappeared after a hundred yards, and we found ourselves squelching through a field that got progressively muddier. The music did, however, get louder; and when we saw the lights of the party-house I felt vindicated enough to say, "See? I told you it was this way."

Flake ignored me. He was trying to maintain his footing in all the mud, and so was walking in a weird sort of crab-fashion, a shuffling glide in time to the steady pulse of the music. I recognised it as a Gary Numan song just from the beat, and hummed along until Flake deigned to talk to me.

"Not many neighbours to complain about the noise," he remarked. "Fucking hell! What was that?"

Something moved in the darkness at our feet. I aimed a kick at whatever-it-was, and missed. "Probably a rat."

"Rats?" Flake moved closer to me. "C'mon, Paul, let's go back into town. The bars won't all be closed yet. Let's do this another time."

Now I wanted to know what it was that had brushed up against Flake and that now decided to land on my foot. I fumbled for my lighter and clicked it into life, and then waved it in a vaguely threatening gesture towards the ground.

A misshapen lump of dirt stared up at me with beady eyes, and then hopped away.

"A frog! A bloody frog!" Flake said in disgust.

"Nah, that's not a frog. It's a toad."

"Some fucking amphibian, anyway – and what the hell is that? Jesus, this guy lives in a swamp. My feet are wet."

"Stop complaining. This was your idea, remember?"

"I don't remember."

"And this isn't a swamp. It's just a wet field."

Flake made a derisory noise. "It's a fucking swamp."

By then we were close enough to the house to see movement inside, and to distinguish the yell and whoop of voices over the blare of the music. Lights shone from every window and winked occasionally from the garden, like fireflies. As we got closer, I realised that the fireflies were a group of people seated on the fibreglass body of a Trabbi. They were passing around a joint in between smoking their own cigarettes, and they called out vague greetings as we came close.

Directly in front of the house was a gravel track that somehow we'd completely missed when we turned off the road. Flake muttered something about my navigational skills and then pushed past me to enter the house. I lingered on the porch for a moment and swapped cigarettes with a girl, had a quick toke, and then wandered inside in search of booze and entertainment.

Now, we could fit quite a few people into our apartment in Berlin. We were lucky: we even had a balcony, and this was a pretty good place to put the sofa if we wanted to cram even more people in for a party. But I'd never seen so many people stuffed into a house like this before. The place was packed. I could barely see the floor, and it seemed to be easiest to allow the movement of the crowd to rotate you from one room to the next. When I saw somebody I wanted to talk to, I just hooked onto their arm and dragged myself out of the current.

It was hard to get a drink, but Flake reappeared by my side and handed me a bottle of schnapps before he vanished back into the crowd. I drank a lot of it pretty quickly, and then started talking to a guy whom I knew slightly from the gig circuit. We were shuffled around up against a wall, and just as I was beginning to feel drunkenly nauseous from the heat and noise, I noticed through the window that the back of the house had a porch.

"It's too hot in here. Why don't we go outside?" I said, pointing with the half-empty schnapps bottle and sloshing some of the spirit onto somebody standing in front of me. "Shit, sorry! Look, there must be a door out the back. Let's go."

I think I was told that I wasn't allowed to go out the back, that the party was inside and besides, it was cold out there, but once I've got an idea in my head then I have to see it through, no matter how stupid it might be. And I didn't see anything stupid about going out the back door onto the porch, just to catch my breath and clear my head.

I took the schnapps with me and managed to slide through the press of bodies into the kitchen, and from there I made it to the door. I rattled the handle once or twice, and then tucked the bottle under my arm so I could fight with the rattan blind that had got tangled around my right hand. I cursed the blind, the door, and the guy who owned the house, all in no particular order; and then when I tried the handle again, the door opened and I staggered outside.

Immediately something thin and cold spiked me in the side. I yelled and dropped the bottle, dancing to one side to avoid the prickly embrace of whatever it was that had attacked me. It was darker out there than I'd expected, and so I automatically reached back to open the door so that at least I'd be able to see what was keeping me company. I missed the handle and flailed into another spiky thing, grabbing onto it and then letting go. It felt like a cane, slippery and damp, and it rustled and bumped and crashed into more canes, until the whole lot went tumbling down with a noise that obliterated the din from inside.

"Holy shit!" I yelped, hopping sideways. I lost my balance and sat down heavily, hearing something give beneath my weight with a loud snap. A second later, I hissed in pain as something very sharp and whippy sank into certain delicate parts of my anatomy.

"Okay," I said to the night when I'd stopped swearing, "what the fuck is this?"

"Willow," came the reply.

I was so startled by the response that I sat there amongst the fallen and broken withies and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. From my undignified position on the floor of the porch I could see a shape seated in a rocking chair a few feet away from me.

"Willow?" I repeated. "What kind of idiot keeps willow on their porch? It's dangerous. People could trip over it. I've lost my drink because of this bloody willow. Where did it go?"

The shape laughed at me. He had a deep, pleasant laugh that made me momentarily less annoyed at the loss of my schnapps. I stopped groping around in the fallen willow canes and levered myself to my feet. I had no clear idea of what I was doing, so I turned back to the shape.

"Why are you lurking outside in the dark?"

I could hear him smile. "I like the view."

I looked around, but only saw more shapes in the darkness. There was a faint breeze that rustled the trees somewhere nearby. I remembered that my jacket was inside, and I shivered.

"Are you cold?"

"Yeah. I should go back inside."

"Come back out again at dawn. It looks better, then."

I snorted. "Doesn't everything look better in the morning?"

He chuckled at that.

I sat down on the porch and felt my feet hang over the edge. I prodded with the toes of my boots and felt another edge just below. Steps. This seemed right and sensible. I was vaguely worried about finding more mud.

"Flake says that this place is a swamp," I told him. "I said it was just a muddy field. Thank God we set up already. Our field is dry. I wouldn't want to set up the stage in a wet field."

He was probably humouring me when he asked, "Who's Flake?"

I flapped a dismissive hand towards the house. "My flat-mate. Our keyboardist and percussion type thingy person. Well, by percussion I mean that he plays the triangle occasionally. That was Aljoscha's idea. He found a triangle somewhere and stuck it on Flake's keyboard stand. A fucking triangle! They're crap."

"You're in a band?"

I lolled back on the porch. "Yeah! Of course I am. You think I visit swamps for fun or something? We're doing a concert on – tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. Soon, anyway. You should come. It would get you out of this swamp and into a dry field. It makes all the difference, you know."

"I don't live in a swamp."

"You sound sensible. I bet you don't. You probably live in Bad Kleinen -" I had problems saying that when I was drunk "- or something."

"No," he said patiently, "I live here."

I was almost horizontal by now. "Here? Like, in this house here?"

"Yes."

"Bloody hell," I said, blinking rapidly to try to clear my head. It didn't work. "You really do live in a swamp. Will I drown if I fall asleep?"

I heard the creak of the chair as he leaned forwards.

"I won't let you drown."

He took my hand – I remember thinking that he must have cat's eyes to see so well in the dark. He felt warm despite the fact that he'd been sitting there all night: warm and safe. Only a drunk would be so trusting. I fell asleep, holding onto his hand.

***

It was still dark when I woke up, but the darkness was now deep blue rather than black. The party was over and it was countryside-quiet. I could hear the ripple of water somewhere close by, and I could smell wet grass and mud and cigarette smoke. A fisherman's sweater had been draped over me. It was warm and heavy, but I was annoyed that it didn't cover my legs as well as my body. It was cold out on the porch. I complained about this.

"Some people are never satisfied," said the shape.

I rolled onto my side to face him. "You still here?"

"It is my house, after all."

"Yes." I nodded into the floor. "Why aren't you in bed?"

"Because there's a couple of people fucking on it. That sort of thing tends to keep one awake."

"God, I'm glad I don't live here." I sat up and realised that I was still drunk. "You – what's your name, by the way?"

"Till."

"Hello. I'm Paul."

We sat in silence for a while.

"Wow, that killed the conversation," I said brightly. "Do you want a cigarette? That's good for at least a couple of sentences." I pawed through my pockets and found the squashed packet and my lighter. I admit that it was more out of curiosity to see what he looked like than from any real need for nicotine.

"Thank you." He took a cigarette and bent down towards the flame. I held the lighter even after he'd lit up, taking in details until he withdrew from the glow and sat back in his rocking chair.

I closed the lighter with a snap. It seemed much darker all of a sudden.

"Well?" he asked. "Do I look the way you thought I did?"

"Yes. No. Both." There had been a falsity to the image I'd seen, a blur of light into shadow caused by the naked flame. His voice was soft and dark, so I'd imagined him to be much the same. I'd been surprised by the planes of light across his cheek; by the way he tilted his head so that his hair fell forwards to conceal the scars. His face was strong, his mouth passionate. I was amazed that such a good-looking man would rather sit on the porch than go to his own party and pull all the girls.

He'd looked at me directly for only an instant. I had the confused impression of dark eyes and heavy brows, and then he'd dropped his gaze. Was he shy? Nobody was shy with me. I was infallible when it came to getting shy people to talk. I could talk to anybody about anything. I could wheedle the life history out of a stranger faster and far less painfully than the Stasi could.

But now it seemed as if I'd met my match. Till was as uncommunicative as a piece of wood. I thought uncharitably that this was probably the reason why his porch was a haven for bits of willow.

"You're blond," he said suddenly. "I didn't expect that."

It was rather random as conversations go, but it was a start. "Yeah. I like it. I have to bleach it every few weeks though, or the roots start to show." I combed out the straggles of my hair with my fingers. In those days I wore it long at the back, long enough for a half-assed ponytail, and it was sort of chopped and fluffed at the front. This wasn't from any pretension to style on my part, but was due to the fact that Flake cut my hair.

I didn't want to get into any further discussion on hairstyles, so I asked, "Why do you have willow on your porch?"

"I'm a basket-weaver."

I laughed out loud, and then stopped when I realised he was serious. "Really?"

"Absolutely. You want a basket?"

"Hell, no." I was about to light my cigarette when I had second thoughts. "Isn't it dangerous to smoke by the – the sticks? The canes? What if they catch fire?"

The tip of his cigarette glowed brightly as he took a drag. "Then they'll burn. It's wood, you know. It burns quite nicely."

I huffed. "I'm not as dumb as I sound."

He made a warm, ticklish 'hmm' that I took as agreement. "Seriously," he said, "it doesn't matter too much. I can always get some more. I've got a stand of willow on the lakeside; and if I run out of certain colours then I can go someplace else and buy the rods."

"Colours," I repeated. "It's a tree. It's tree-coloured."

"Actually…" Till paused, tapped flutters of burning ash onto the porch, and then said, "You're not really interested, are you?"

"It's fascinating."

He obviously heard the dubiousness in my tone. "Hey, you asked. It's practical, it's beautiful, it pays a decent wage -"

I nodded. "And it's weird as fuck."

"I'm good at it." He lifted his hands. "It's - Well. I'm good at it."

We watched the blue lift and merge into the twilight grey of dawn. I wondered if he sat like this every morning, to watch the sun come up. It seemed like the kind of freedom that should be rationed.

I pulled the fisherman's sweater tight around my shoulders. Belatedly, I realised that it must belong to Till. Embarrassed, I took it off and folded it, and then placed it on the porch behind me. He hid behind his fringe and said nothing.

"You really like basket-weaving?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Till took his time in replying. "Because I don't have to make conversation while I do it."

"Oh." I wondered if that was a hint. "I bet you do, though."

"I'm sorry?"

"I bet you do," I said with a yawn. I lounged on the porch and wondered if I could use his sweater as a pillow. "Talk, I mean. I bet you sit there and talk to the willow, or the flowers, or the fish, or the birds in the trees."

Till made a soft snuffle that could have been interpreted as amusement. "Not really. Sometimes I talk to the radio, though."

"At least it answers back," I said. "Okay, it might not actually converse with you, but…"

"You're right. I talk to the willow, too; and that does answer back."

I sat up in alarm. "It does?"

"Of course. Stick around tomorrow and I'll show you."

Quite truthfully I said, "You are the strangest man I've ever met."

"I can't believe you're not bored here."

I shrugged and nodded back to the darkened windows of the house. "Party's over. Anyway, you're interesting." I hesitated for a moment, and then before I could think better of it, I said: "You know, I talk a lot. All the time. Even in my sleep, apparently. I don't know why. If I don't hear my voice, I get scared. It's a safety net. A comfort. I hate silence. It's… I hate it."

"It's not silent here," Till said; and for a moment we listened to the water and the breeze in the trees and the gathering chirp and twitter of the dawn chorus.

I shook my head. "There's no traffic. No loud music – well, not at the moment. No movement. And that's why you're so interesting. You're so still. How can you be so still, and so silent? It's like you're dead or something."

He was quiet for such a long time that I was afraid that I'd offended him; and then he said softly, "Maybe that's the secret. Maybe you have to be a little bit dead inside. That's why you'll never be silent, Paul. You have too much life."

I honestly didn't know how to respond to that, so I shuffled around on the floor of the porch and then said, "Thanks."

His head dipped down. "You smile a lot," he said.

I smiled, then. "And you laugh a lot."

There was surprise in his voice. "I don't."

"Yes, you do."

Till stared at me. He seemed genuinely perplexed. "That's strange."

"It's been a strange night." I yawned again. "Okay. I'm going to sleep. Just for half an hour. Wake me up, yes?"

***

He didn't.

When I woke for the second time that morning, he was asleep in the rocking chair; a tangle of dark hair and folded limbs and deep, deep breathing. I watched him for a while, and thought that, while he looked peaceful, he would probably have really bad cramp in one leg from sitting all twisted up like that. That useless observation made, I got up off the floor and went into the house to forage for food.

Stumbling around the wreck of the kitchen, I made enough noise to waken the dead. I heard gripes of complaint from elsewhere, but nobody challenged me even when I began singing. By the time I decided that Till would be awake, I'd managed to cook something. This was a novelty, and I wanted appreciation if not outright praise.

I nudged open the door onto the porch and went outside. "Look," I said brightly, holding out the frying pan. "I made breakfast."

Till brushed back his fringe and gave me a steady look. He seemed different in daylight - remote and uncertain – but then he recognised me and tried a polite smile. "What the hell is that? It smells disgusting."

"Erm. It's fried eggs. Or it was." I agitated the frying pan, but the eggs refused to move. "Only, you don't seem to have any butter. So I had to improvise."

His eyebrows lifted slightly. "What with – axel grease?"

I looked down at the pan again. The mess of eggs was surrounded by a thick black substance. It did rather resemble axel grease. "No," I said, wounded. "I used honey."

"Fried eggs and honey. Of course."

I couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic or not. Just in case he was, I added, "The honey only went black because you didn't clean the pan properly. I don't know what you last cooked in this thing, but it must have been really… black."

He stretched. The rocking chair creaked as he moved. "I probably burnt something in it. Never mind. Apparently, it adds to the flavour."

I was about to agree with this statement when the door swung open and Flake peered out. He blinked at the daylight and the glitter of the sun reflecting on the water, and then he shielded his eyes with one hand and made a noise that sounded like "Unghrr."

"Morning!" I chirped, knowing from long experience that Flake was not fully human until past mid-afternoon, especially when he'd been raving drunk the night before.

"Fuck you," came the cheery reply. "What's that smell?"

"Breakfast." I waved the contents of the pan under his nose, hoping that he'd do something amusing, like throw up. I was disappointed.

"I'm not eating that. It looks like… I don't know what it looks like, but I'm not eating it."

"Good," I said, "because it's not for you. It's our breakfast. You can make your own."

Flake frowned at the pronoun and then took another tentative peek outside. He tilted his head around the doorframe enough to see Till seated on the rocking chair, and then he said, "Who the hell is that?"

"That's Till."

"Oh." Flake waved vaguely. "Hi, Till."

"This is his house."

Flake nodded. "Right. Why is there no food?"

"Because my guests have eaten it all, I imagine," Till said.

"Yeah. Probably. You need to get some more food, man. I'm starving." Flake pushed his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose and yawned, losing interest in the conversation. Halfway through the yawn I could see the implications of the last few moments begin to hit him.

"Shit!" Flake said, staring at Till. "This is your house?"

"Yes."

"Oh." Flake winced, screwing up his face in almost-pain. "Fuck. Your stereo, too? Your, uh, records?"

"Yes and yes again," Till said, patient as ever.

"I… might have broken one of them."

"The stereo or a record?"

"A record." Flake winced again. "Maybe two records."

"Flake!" I scolded, and nudged him in the belly with the frying pan.

He looked offended. "What? They were fucking awful. Folk songs. Folk songs! Some idiot was playing them at top volume and I really couldn't hear any more. Rock and roll is bad enough, but folk songs… They deserve to – uh… I mean, I'm really sorry. It was an accident. I didn't mean to – to tread on them."

Till shrugged. "I stole them from my father. Break as many as you like."

"Cool guy," Flake said to me as he retreated back into the kitchen. "Any eggs left?"

***

Till and I ate breakfast on the porch. I'd only been able to find one fork, so we shared it between us and took a mouthful at a time of the egg-and-honey mess, direct from the pan. The black stuff tasted a little bit like steak and onion. It was a very strange breakfast. He didn't say anything apart from to thank me the first time I gave him the fork.

Robbed of conversation, I looked at the scenery. It was very pretty, if one liked the countryside. The porch led onto a lawn edged with trees and dog roses; at the end of the lawn was a reed-bed, and beyond that, the lake. The water was a pale shifting colour of blue and silver under the morning light. I couldn't see the other side. It seemed boundless; even though I knew it was only the Schweriner See and that it definitely had another side because I'd been there with Aljoscha.

"Told you it looked better in the morning," Till said.

I nodded and took the fork back. "It's okay."

"Only 'okay'?" he asked, sounding amused.

I stabbed at a crusted piece of egg and shrugged. "I prefer the city."

"Have you always lived in Berlin?"

"No." I offered him the fork and he shook his head, so I set it down in the pan. "I lived in the countryside once. A long time ago."

Till took the frying pan from me. "What happened there to make you hate it so much?"

I was so startled by the question that I laughed, trying to deflect it. "What is this? You only talk during the day and you're all quiet and mysterious at night? Anyway, I don't hate the countryside. It just makes me nervous. That's all."

"He's frightened of cows," Flake said as he came out onto the porch to join us.

I scowled. "I am not."

"You are." Flake addressed Till and ignored my evil glares. "Once, we were in a field up by the coast, and Paul was chased by a cow. It didn't like the way he played guitar. It was mooing and everything. And Paul just ran away from it, yelling, until he fell over."

Till gave me a startled glance. "What happened?"

"Nothing," I said, snatching back the frying pan. "I'll put this inside."

Flake leaned against the door and smiled. "The cow licked you. There you were, flat in the grass, and the cow licked you. It must have thought you were its calf or something."

"Yeah, it was really funny." I poked Flake with the pan to move him out of the way. "Especially the part where I was covered in cow-shit. I remember you thought that was fucking hilarious."

I went inside and ran the taps at full blast so I didn't have to hear the remainder of the conversation. For some reason it annoyed me that Flake should mention that story. Yeah, it was true, and I didn't like cows in the first place, but still – I didn't want Till to think I was too much of an idiot. Not so soon, anyway. He was different from the usual crowd I hung out with. He was very different from Aljoscha.

I made a half-hearted attempt to clean the frying pan and then gave up. I dried my hands on my jeans and then went back onto the porch. Till and Flake had disappeared. I stared at the rocking chair for a moment. It looked peculiar without Till hunched up in it.

A path led from the porch around one side of the house, so I followed it out to the front. Flake was standing on the gravel track, admiring the Trabant. Till stood beside him. It was the first time I'd seen him standing up, and I realised then how big he was. Flake is tall, but so skinny that he looks like a stork. Till was almost as tall as Flake, but more than twice his width. Even dressed all in black, he was huge. I felt cheated. He'd seemed so small in the rocking chair.

Flake waved me over, and then said to our host, "Hey, Till, I heard last night that you could pick up your car on your own. Is that true?"

Till gave the Trabbi a push. "Sure. It's only fibreglass."

"Go on, then," I said, cross.

He gave me a curious look, but obliged me all the same. We edged around the car as he went to the front end and crouched down. An idiot would bend over and try to lift it from the bumper and would probably dislocate their arms in the process. Till was not an idiot. He scuffled down into the mud and put his entire body weight behind it, hooking his hands beneath the overhang of the bumper.

Up went the front of the car, fluid and easy, as if it weighed barely anything. It did, though: I watched Till snarl with concentration as he levered himself further beneath it, shoving it higher until the bumper was level with his chest and his shoulders were tight with strain.

"That's enough," I said, alarmed. "You'll give yourself indigestion."

Till gave a crack of laughter, and the car shook as if possessed. A minute or so later, he gently lowered the car back to the ground. He stood up straight and rolled his shoulders to ease the tension, and then wiped his hands and looked at us.

"Whoa," said Flake. "What the fuck, man. Do you get a discount at the garage for doing that?"

"Anybody can do that," I said. "Once, I saw a Trabbi blown down the street by the wind."

"You liar," Flake snorted.

"I did!" Actually, I wasn't sure that I had. Maybe I'd dreamt that. But it was too late to backtrack, and so I blustered on: "It's not so difficult."

Till nodded towards the Trabbi. "Be my guest."

I could see that Flake was biting his lip in an effort not to laugh, so I said, "Right. Watch this."

I have no idea what possessed me to do something so stupid. Maybe I wanted to impress him after Flake's story about me running away from the cow. Anyway, I knew that it would be impossible for me to be able to lift the car the way he'd done, so I decided that a cunning plan would be to get down on the grass and try to bench-press it. So I wriggled under the front of the car, and then lay there on the damp gravel and examined the underside of the Trabbi. I'd never had cause to lie beneath a car before, so it was pretty interesting.

"Come on," I heard Flake say. "We have to meet Aljoscha at one o'clock."

"What time is it now?" I asked, hoping that it was ten to one, so I could get out of this ridiculous situation with at least some dignity intact.

"Eleven minutes past twelve," Till said.

"Just admit you can't do it," said Flake helpfully. "You're a wimp."

"Oh, really? This is from somebody who can't undo a jam jar," I snapped.

Flake laughed. "I'm not the one under a car."

I swore and then shoved at the curve of fibreglass body above me. To my surprise, it gave quite easily. I began to hope that all was not lost, and so I pushed as hard as I could. The weight of the engine nearly crippled me. I yelled and let go, and then yelled some more when the car shuddered on top of me like some great mass of beige jelly.

"Wow, Paul, you managed to lift it about one inch off the ground, that's pretty fucking cool!" Flake mocked from the safety of several feet away.

I couldn't answer, being momentarily struck dumb with terror at the thought of being crushed to death by a Trabant. My parents would be so ashamed. I lay flat on my back and felt the damp ooze through my shirt. The mud smelled like axel grease. I felt sick.

Flake banged his fist on the side of the car. "Paul!"

I shook myself out of my stupor and wormed sideways, one hand flailing for freedom. I was hoping to grab Flake's ankle so I could knock him over for taking the piss. Instead I managed to grab Till, who took hold of my hand and pulled me out from underneath the car and quite effortlessly set me on my feet as if I were a particularly obnoxious child who'd been playing hide and seek. I half-expected him to scold me, too, but he didn't. What he actually said was, "The engine is heavy."

I detected sympathy in his tone, and smarted with it. "Gosh, do you think so? I'm just a guitarist. We don't need to know these things. Guitarists only need strong wrists."

For some reason, this made Flake laugh even harder.

Till gave me a patient look. "I'm a drummer."

"Are you? Well, there it is, then." I felt humiliated, but I'd only got myself to blame. "Drummers must be really fucking strong."

"I used to swim as well," he added, as if this was a good excuse.

"What, with your drum kit as a drag-weight?"

He raised his eyebrows and I realised that I'd overstepped the line. I brushed the back of my hand against my mouth as if I could gag myself from making any further moronic remarks, and ended with saying softly, "I'm a really bad loser."

Till smiled at me, gently. "It wasn't a competition."

"No. But… It doesn't matter." I busied myself with trying to wipe the worst of the mud from my clothes. It was in my hair and everything, and I wrinkled my nose in disgust.

"Do you want to wash? I have -" Till began.

"A lake. You have a lake and I can go jump in it," I finished for him. I scrubbed at my hair viciously. Flake was still laughing. Till looked wounded, as if I'd really hurt him. He folded his arms across his chest and dropped his gaze.

I felt irrationally angry. I liked him, and I'd made a fool of myself, and Flake was laughing at me, and I wanted a reason to come back here and see Till again, if only to leave him with a better impression than the one I'd already made.

"Paul. We should go. Aljoscha will wonder where the fuck we are," Flake said with a loud sigh. "It'll take us ages to get back… unless Till can drive us there?"

I rolled my eyes. Trust Flake to immediately grasp the possibilities of knowing someone with a car. Even I wouldn't be so blatant. Not about such a material thing, anyway.

Till didn't seem surprised by the request. "Sure," he said, low-voiced. "Get in. It's open."

Flake grinned: Mission accomplished. He slid into the back of the car, and so I sat in the passenger seat, still combing mud out of my hair with my fingers. Till lapsed into silence, pretending to concentrate on his driving. It wasn't as if it was a difficult route to follow – back into town and then out the other side - and the road wasn't exactly heaving with traffic. I watched his hands on the wheel and then forced myself to look away.

It was quarter past one by the time we reached the field. I could see Aljoscha prowling up and down, waiting for us. Flake leapt out of the car and, caught by his urgency, I started after him. Then I swore aloud and dashed back to the car. It was still idling by the side of the road, as if he'd been waiting for me to remember. I put my hands on the roof of the Trabbi and leaned down to him.

"Thank you. For the ride. And for the eggs."

Till nodded, very serious, still waiting.

"And…" I said, screwing up my face in a wince, "I'm sorry about before. I was stupid and rude. I'm not always like that."

"I was beginning to think that I prefer you when you're drunk and crazy than when you're sober and crazy," he said, and he looked up at me from beneath the drift of his hair. His eyes were grey, I noticed: expressive and beautiful when he was unguarded. I decided that he needed to be unguarded a little more often.

"Yes," I said, having completely lost the thread of conversation. "Oh, and I'm sorry on Flake's behalf for breaking your records. I'll make him buy you some new ones, if you like."

He shook his head and his fringe fell into his eyes. I resisted the urge to brush it back for him, and tapped my fingers on the roof of the car instead.

"It's okay. I have other records," he said, apparently oblivious to my agitation.

"Right." I let go of the car and stepped back. "Uh, the concert is this evening. So you can come. If you want to. If you haven't got any baskets to make."

That did it: He smiled.

"See you later, then," I said, triumphant. I gave him a wave, and then turned and ran after Flake into our nice, dry field where our van was parked beside the stage and where Aljoscha waited to bawl us out for being late.

***

He came to the concert; stood a little way off and listened with that amused, patient expression I was coming to recognise as typically Till. I flattered myself that he was there for me, and then I was offended that, by the time we'd finished the set, he'd gone.

***

On the way back to Berlin, Flake said to me, "He likes you."

"What? Who?" I asked, even though I knew the answer.

"That guy. Till. He likes you."

I affected nonchalance. "So? You like me. Or at least, I hope you do. Otherwise I'm moving out."

Flake wasn't fooled for a second. "Paul…"

"Okay." I shrugged and stared out of the window. "He's interesting."

"What will Aljoscha say?"

I scrubbed at the window, hard. "I don't give a fuck what he says."

"The town mouse and the country mouse."

I glared at him. "I'm not a fucking mouse."

Flake gave me a glittering look. "Yes, you are."


	2. bitter withy

For the next few days I was pleasantly moonstruck. By that I mean that every time I went out and talked to someone, I would compare them to Till. Very few people measured up, in any sense of the phrase. I was as thrilled as if I'd just discovered an Amazon tribe untouched by civilisation. Looking back on it, I suppose that that was precisely how I saw him. It was very presumptuous of me, but I saw it as my duty to save him from his swamp and this weird fascination with weaving baskets.

On Thursday night, our telephone rang. I was standing on the balcony, smoking and watering the cannabis plants that had wilted a little in the summer heat. Flake shouted that the call was for me, so I went inside and took the receiver, frowning at Flake's peculiarly blank expression.

"Yes, what is it?" I said, thinking that it was probably Aljoscha.

"Paul. Hello. This is -"

"Till!" I exclaimed. I dropped the cigarette and it fell onto my foot. I hopped to one side and swore loudly: "Ow, fuck! Shit, bastard thing -"

"Well, if you don't want to talk to me…" Till said, sounding amused.

"No! I mean, yes!" I snapped, stamping on the smouldering cigarette before it could set fire to my trousers. "I wasn't talking to you!"

From the kitchen door, Flake gave me a look that asked me if I could be any more of an idiot. I turned my back on him and carried the telephone out onto the balcony for some privacy.

"If you weren't talking to me, then who were you talking to?" Now he sounded mystified. "Or should I not have asked that question?"

"Oh, God." I leaned against the wall and sighed. "You know when I told you that I wasn't usually so stupid?"

"You lied."

"'Fraid so."

"At least you're honest about it," he said. "Most people hide their stupidity. Or dress it up and parade it as intelligence."

I poked at one of the plants with my toes. "Do you speak from experience?"

There was a brief pause, and then he laughed. "Maybe."

"And now that I've insulted you again, tell me what I can do for you."

"You didn't insult me."

"I'll have to try harder."

My attempt at humour garnered me another chuckle, and then he said, "You left your jacket here last weekend. Did you know?"

It had been so hot that I hadn't missed it until then, but as soon as I knew it wasn't in the apartment then I got twitchy about it. I'm not an obsessive about my clothes, but jackets were different, especially when they were leather and a gift from my ex-wife and had all kinds of crap stuffed in the pockets.

"Paul? Do you want me to post it back to you?"

"No," I said. "I'll come and get it."

"Good." Now he sounded very brisk and businesslike. "There's a train at nine-thirty on Saturday morning. It should get you here for lunchtime."

I stared at the tenements around me; at the fading glow of the sunset over the city, and I wondered if it was already dark in Hohen Viecheln. "Okay," I said. "That sounds good to me."

"You may as well stay over. We can visit some fields; see some cows."

"I'm laughing." I tried to sound annoyed, but failed.

"Saturday, then. Goodbye."

I hung up and went back inside, whistling.

Flake peered over the top of possibly the biggest sandwich I'd ever seen, and frowned at me. "Please will you pick up the cable - I'm always tripping over it after you've dragged the phone all through the house."

With exaggerated care, I set down the telephone and then gathered up the long trailing extension lead we'd fitted so that we could conduct conversations from every room in the apartment. Friends would come round just to be able to say they'd had a phone call in the bath. It was great fun.

"Well?" Flake asked around a mouthful of food. "What did he say?"

I dropped the cable in a heap on the floor and leaned across the back of the couch. "I'm going to visit him for the weekend."

Flake swallowed his bit of sandwich and glowered at me. "What about Sasha's party on Saturday?"

I opened my mouth and then closed it again; thought for a minute, and then said, "Shit. I forgot."

"Ring him back."

"I don't have his number."

Flake rolled his eyes dramatically. "You're fucking hopeless."

"It's just this once. I'm only going to get my jacket back."

He gave me a look that suggested that I'd probably left it on purpose.

"Ah, Flake!" I said, and rolled over the back of the couch onto the cushions. I grinned at him as he ate the rest of his sandwich. "I like him, okay? There's nothing wrong with liking someone, is there?"

"No," Flake said, chasing crumbs around his plate with his finger, "but you like rather too many people, and I can never keep track of them all."

"Hey. That's not fair." I was offended, and so I pulled a cushion from beneath me and flung it at him. It missed by a yard and hit the wall instead, thudding against it and releasing a cloud of dust.

"It's not like that," I added, when Flake continued to collect crumbs and paid me not the slightest bit of attention. "It's just that he's different. He's really quiet."

"Oh, that's it," Flake said, raising his eyebrows and pushing his spectacles back up to the bridge of his nose. "You've finally found someone who'll listen to your chatter without interrupting you."

"Shut it." I bounced off the couch and grabbed the plate from him, carrying it off towards the kitchen. "I'm having a drink. Did you want anything else?"

He raised his voice: "Maybe a piece of cheese for the mouse."

"Your wit continues to scintillate even at a distance of ten feet." I opened the fridge and dumped a whole block of cheese on the plate, and took it out to Flake.

He eyed it with misgiving and began to nibble at one corner. "What do you think the country mouse can do for you?"

I sat on the arm of the couch and pondered this as I waited for the kettle to boil. "I think it's more what I can do for him."

Flake shook his head at my stupidity. He should have been used to it by then. He put down the block of cheese and said, "Right. The town mouse dazzles the country mouse with tales of streets paved with gold… You know how this story ends, don't you?"

"How?" I asked, just to humour him.

"They both get pounced on by a big black cat," Flake said. "Aljoscha won't like it."

"Oh, Aljoscha, Aljoscha. He won't notice. He won't care," I said with more confidence than I felt. I got off the armrest and went to the kitchen, and over the whistle of the kettle it was all too easy for me to ignore Flake's next words:

"We owe him a lot, Paul."

Like fuck we did. Maybe to start with, when neither of us knew what we were doing, when Flake was only just sixteen and I was barely eighteen, and both of us were desperate to Be In A Band. Aljoscha was older, wiser, he had connections, he knew people, he knew about music. Everybody in Prenzlauer Berg talked about him, and so when he suggested that we join his band then of course we said yes.

There was a price on his generosity, but I was happy to pay it. Well, maybe not happy, but I was willing. To a point, anyway. I wondered if I'd just gone past that point. Four years was a long time, after all, and I got bored very quickly.

I made myself a cup of coffee and went back into the living room. I said to Flake: "I'm going to see him. If Aljoscha asks, then – Just say that I've… No. Don't tell him anything. He won't ask."

Flake sighed, long-suffering. "And what shall I say to Sasha?"

I sipped my coffee and then said, "Say that I've gone to bait a mousetrap."

***

The train got in a few minutes early, and so I took the same route across the field that Flake and I had taken a week before. In daylight it seemed less boggy, despite the short stubby tufts of marsh-grass that showed that the ground here was almost permanently damp.

This time I could see the house before I could hear anything from it. It looked lonely out here on its own, with only a wet field in front and the endless glitter of the lake behind. I tried to imagine a row of houses alongside it, all painted in the variant primary colours that seem to be favoured by those country-living types: autumn red, mustard yellow, Aegean blue. It didn't seem to fit the landscape in front of me, so I gave up on the idea and concentrated on where I was walking.

It was only as I got a little nearer to the house that I noticed a woman standing on the gravel track. She seemed impatient, or anxious, or possibly both. She called to someone, and then the front door opened and out came a child, a little girl, who moved down the steps crabwise and then stopped.

Till followed her, his head bent low as he spoke.

I looked back at the woman, who had turned away pointedly when Till had emerged from the house. I came a bit closer. I didn't want to barge into a domestic argument, but neither was I going to hang around in a damp field for the rest of the afternoon. Maybe I thought that my appearance would diffuse the situation, whatever that was.

Till saw me. He gave me a half-embarrassed look, but said nothing.

I jumped over a scrap of brambles and smiled at everyone indiscriminately. I've found that that's usually a good policy. This time, nobody smiled back, which is usually a bad sign; but I forged on regardless.

"Hello," I said to the daughter.

It wasn't as if I had no experience with children, but still, I was surprised by her reaction. Most kids would either laugh at me or otherwise would hide behind their parent. Till's daughter stood and looked at me; her expression serious and bold. And then she opened her mouth and screamed, a single high-pitched shriek that put me in my place.

Till dropped to his knees beside her and gave her a cuddle. Such a good papa. Such a gullible papa. She gave me a smug look from where she stood, safe in his arms. I had to admire her. It wasn't every day that I was outmanoeuvred by a three-year old. She would have him wrapped around her little finger for the rest of his life.

"Nele!" shouted the woman, and this time there was real anger in her tone.

The child squirmed, turned her face up to her father's in silent demand for kisses. He tickled her and whispered in her ear. I turned away and studied the gravel until I heard the child giggle and squeak and then run off towards her mother. Only then did I judge it polite to look up.

"The train was early," I said. "You wouldn't believe it, would you? It's always late when I really need to get somewhere. Maybe country trains are faster, nobody wants to go anywhere in the country and -"

Till brushed the hair out of his eyes and smiled. "Hello, Paul."

***

I followed him inside, this time taking a good look around. Without the mass of people, the house seemed much smaller. It was probably the size of our apartment, but it was made entirely from wood and so the floors creaked. It had a sort of warm glow to it from the amount of rubbed and varnished wood on display, and it was a lot tidier than I remembered from the previous week.

"Nice place," I said. It seemed to be a good time to utter banalities.

"I like it." He gave me a mischievous look. "Even if it is located in a swamp."

"So, that was your, uh, wife…?"

Till took down a bottle of whiskey from a shelf. "Ex-wife. Want a drink?"

"Sure." I sat down on the couch and watched him pour the whiskey. I felt a bit closer to him. We both had ex-wives. That's the kind of thing that men can bond over, especially if the ex-wife was a bitch. Not that Nikki was. In fact, I was more of a bitch than she ever was, but let's not go there.

"So you live here on your own?" I asked, smiling my thanks as he handed me a very generous measure of whiskey.

"Yep. Apart from when my daughter comes to stay. I have to clean up then. You're lucky; you benefit from my tidying of two days ago." Till sank down into a chair opposite me and took a long draught from his glass. "It'll take me a week to find where I put everything. Which reminds me…"

He got up again and went towards the front door, where a row of coats and jackets hung from pegs. He took down my leather jacket and draped it over the back of the couch. "Here. So you don't forget it again."

I grabbed at it. "Thanks." Immediately I started to go through the pockets, checking the contents. "You didn't touch anything, did you? No, of course you didn't; that was rude of me."

Till picked up his whiskey again but just held it, watching me panic my way through the jacket pockets. "Is there anything missing?"

I unzipped the inner pocket and pulled out the sheaf of photographs I carried around with me like talismans: black and white pictures of my parents, me and my sister as children, a crappy photo I'd taken in Russia, one of Nikki, three of Emil. As I counted them through, my hands were shaking.

"No, there's nothing missing," I said. "It's just that I hate – really, really hate – losing things. If someone stole something from me, then it's different. It's just losing things. It really bothers me."

I stuffed the photographs back inside the jacket and took a gulp of whiskey.

Till leaned forwards and gestured at the floor by my feet. "You dropped one. Is that you?"

I reached down and rescued the picture, turning it around so that he could see it: a silly image of me holding Emil above my head while we both laughed at each other. "Yeah. That's me and my son, Emil. He's two. He giggles a lot."

"I'm not surprised." Till took a sip of whiskey and settled back into the chair.

I waited for him to mention his daughter – talk of offspring is another sure bet for conversation – but he said nothing. I wondered if I'd already outstayed my welcome. I had my jacket now; did he want me to leave? Nervous, and hating the feeling of nervousness when it's so unlike me, I drank half of the whiskey and blinked tearfully at its sharpness.

"Flake would like this stuff," I said, for something to say.

Till put his chin down to his chest, and his voice came out as a rumble of sound: "Flake calls me the country mouse. Why?"

"Because he's retarded." I looked at him anxiously. "When did you hear that?"

"When I called you on Thursday. He answered the phone and said -" here Till lifted his head and did a fair imitation of Flake's intonation, "'Ah, country mouse, how nice of you to squeak.'"

I covered my eyes with my free hand. "Wow. It's not enough that I can embarrass myself, now my friends have to embarrass me, too!"

"I suppose you're the town mouse," Till said after a pause.

"So he says." I felt uncomfortable. "Just ignore him. Anyway, how the hell did you get our phone number?"

"Ah." He tilted his head and smiled. Two smiles in half an hour, I was doing well. "That's easy," he said. "I know people."

He lapsed into silence again. I couldn't quite work him out. It was like he wanted to say things, but he couldn't quite manage to find the words, or maybe he decided just as he was about to speak that what he had to say wasn't so important after all, and so he kept quiet.

Me, I have the opposite problem: and so it was rather frustrating. It was also getting ridiculous. Something had to be done. "Look," I said, "I came up here because I think you're kind of interesting and I'd like to get to know you, but in order for that to happen then you have to do something for me."

Till looked wary. "What?"

"You have to fucking _talk_ ," I said.

Wary became mystified. "You know, this will sound very strange, but I find you just a little bit intimidating."

I must have looked suitably shocked and appalled, because he hastened to add: "Because you talk so much. I think it's a skill. I should like to learn it."

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," I said.

"No. I'm quite serious." His expression was solemn, and he looked at me once before he dropped his gaze again.

I shook my head and took another gulp of whiskey. This time it tasted better. "Of all the reasons why people have wanted to be friends with me, 'teach me how to have a conversation' has got to rank as the weirdest."

"You're right. It sounds lunatic." He was smiling, though, and I liked the way he smiled. "But it happens to be true. I've never really needed to have long conversations. Only in my head, and they don't count."

"Talking to yourself is an underrated pastime," I said with some authority. "I recommend it as an exercise in self-"

"Abuse," Till finished for me, po-faced.

I snorted into my drink. "No, no, no. Self-abuse is far more entertaining even than talking to yourself. Did I say that out loud? Yes, I did. Okay. I meant self-esteem. Talking to yourself is a good exercise in self-esteem."

He stared at me. "What do you say to yourself?"

"Oh," I sighed airily, and wiggled deeper into the couch. "I say: 'Paul, you are the best guitarist in the whole world, you are so talented that your name will live forever in the punk-rock hall of fame; Paul, you are so damn cute that nobody can resist you and you will be rewarded with lots of…" I tailed off, unable to think of a really punchy finale, and so I looked at the glass in my hand and concluded, "with lots of drink."

He pushed the bottle towards me with his feet. "Help yourself."

"I wasn't hinting. I haven't finished this one yet." I nursed the glass against my chest and gave him an encouraging smile. "You told me that you talked to the willow. That's a start."

"Hardly the same as talking to another human being."

He did have a point there. I shrugged. "You must have friends."

Till nodded. "I have a few, yes."

"A few? There were fifty people here last weekend."

"They weren't friends. They were just people I know."

I shook my head at the distinction and poured myself another shot of whiskey. "Okay. But you have some friends. And, well, are they mind-readers? Do you sit and commune with them in silence?"

"I don't like small-talk."

I waved my hands in the air and tried not to slop my drink on the floor. "Then we won't talk small-talk! Tell me something big! Something important!"

Till got off his chair and came over to reclaim the bottle. "Ask me something, then. What I might consider small-talk is what you might consider a major topic of conversation."

I sighed over my whiskey. "You really want me to work for this, don't you? You must have been vile at school."

"Actually," he said, raising his eyebrows, "I was hardly ever at school. Not normal school, anyway."

I sat up. "Really?"

He nodded. "I was at sports school."

"Of course, the ancient and noble sport of car-hurling," I said.

For a moment he looked irritated. "I told you: I used to be a swimmer."

"Were you any good?"

"Yes. I was." He wore a closed, shuttered expression and his voice was tight.

"That's not a good topic for discussion, is it?"

He managed to smile. "Not yet. Maybe another time."

"Well." I nibbled at the rim of the glass thoughtfully, my gaze wandering around the room. "All these books," I said, nodding at the shelves and the pile on the floor. "You read a lot for a swimmer who didn't go to proper school."

"My father is a writer. A poet."

Again, his tone suggested that this was a subject that raised red flags and was surrounded by barbed wire and that really, I should just back away right about now. So I carried on regardless:

"That's interesting, because my father is a professor of Slavic languages. He would come out of his study and bark orders at me in Kashubian, or Bulgarian, or Serbo-Croat, like I was supposed to understand them."

I smiled, not at fond memory, but at the fact that we had another thing in common. I counted three things now: both divorced, both fathers, both with overly verbose parents. As topic number three was obviously out of bounds, I decided to tackle topic number one:

"Why did you get divorced?"

Till looked shocked at the question, and then even more shocked when he realised that he'd answered: "Because I wasn't good enough for her."

"That's a bit unfair," I said, keeping my voice neutral.

"I'm chronically unfaithful." This time his expression was hard.

"So you like sex," I said. "Okay, er, sex with people other than your wife. That's not so bad, is it?"

He shrugged and turned away.

Even I could tell that I'd made a major gaffe, and so of course I blundered on, trying to fix it: "I was kind-of faithful to my wife. Of course, it only lasted a year and then I got bored with it. Not with her, just the situation. It was so silly. We only got married because I wanted to know what it was like. I thought I would feel different when I got married, you know, like you think you'll feel different after the first time you have sex or whatever. And I would just look at the papers and it had my name and the word MARRIED, all in block letters, and it was so surreal – and it felt exactly the same. It really threw me: I honestly thought it would be different, and so I had to move on and do the next thing. Because I had this big long list of things I had to do when I was a grown-up, and getting married was the biggest thing on there. Apart from having a baby, I mean."

I paused to breathe, and realised that he was staring at me. I still hadn't got used to how disconcerting he is when he gets that expression on his face. "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm not very good at this sort of thing. I'm much better at talking crap."

"I noticed."

"Sorry." I wrinkled my nose and looked down into my drink, certain that, yet again, the conversation was at an end.

He was quiet for a while, and then said slowly, softly: "I married her because she was pregnant. My father said he would shoot me if I didn't go through with it." Another pause. "He probably wishes he'd shot me anyway."

I peeked up at him. "Did you love her?"

An elegant tilt of the head, neither yes or no. "Maybe. Yes. Of course." He sighed and leaned back hard against the chair. "I couldn't be faithful. It was too easy not to be. And it made my father so fucking angry he could barely bring himself to speak to me, which was good. Sometimes I think I did it purely to piss him off."

His voice dropped lower, became almost a whisper. I had to lean forwards to hear him. He was so slow and deliberate in his speech, like an infant learning.

"He loved her more than I did, probably. Felt shamed by my disgusting behaviour. Felt obliged to put things right. You know, just before I got married, he waited up for me to come home, and then he shouted at me for half an hour, as if I was a child. I suppose I was; I suppose I always will be. He said I was fucking useless: as crippled emotionally as I was crippled as a swimmer. A useless lump of unadulterated failure."

Till looked up at me, and his eyes glittered. "Do you like that line? 'A useless lump of unadulterated failure.' My father: the poet. You'd have thought he could come up with something that scanned better when he insulted me."

I didn't know what to say, so I had another drink and then offered, "For the line to work, you would have to split it into two."

He blinked at me, eyebrows climbing higher and higher.

"Four and ten. Deca-something. But it still doesn't scan. You're right: It's a dreadful line. I hope your father doesn't sell many poems."

He made a rumbling noise in his throat that I took to be squashed amusement.

"Is there anything that you're faithful to?" I asked. It was meant as a joke, but he took it seriously and thought about it for a moment.

"The things I create," he said.

It was such a weird answer that I stared at him in silence for about a minute before I said, "What, like your baskets?"

He nodded, still serious. "And my daughter."

"Oh! Yes. Yes, I see. I know what you mean," I said quickly, hoping he didn't think I was too stupid.

"My father likes to tell me that Nele is the only good thing I've ever done."

"He doesn't like your baskets?"

Till looked at me, bemused; and then he started to laugh. He put a hand over his mouth to try to keep it in, but his whole body shook with it. His laughter is like a brilliant disease, rare and infectious, and soon I was laughing, too.

He took a huge breath to steady himself, sniggered a bit, and then said in a plaintive voice, "He _hates_ my baskets."

We laughed. We howled. Till slid off the chair and slumped down onto the floor, helpless with laughter. My sides hurt and I got hiccups, which made us laugh even more. I kept trying to say something, but every time I tried to speak, I just laughed harder. Eventually I managed to say, "Well, then. Your father is a wanker."

Till's laughter died in his throat. I heard it die. It was so sudden, just like a light-switch: on, off. He sat up and sniffed; ran his hands through his hair. "Yeah," he said, and now his voice was sad. "Yeah, he is."

It took me a little longer to come down from the hilarity high. My body felt too sensitive after all that laughter, and so when he walked past me I actually flinched when he stopped and turned around.

"Paul. Do you – do you want another drink?"

I nodded. "Coffee would be good."

"Sure."

He went into the kitchen. I heard him moving stuff around. I wondered if he'd cleaned the frying pan yet, or if it still had blackened crap all over it. Before he could put the water on to boil, I raised my voice and called, "Till, what you said just now. About being faithful to things you create. You create friendships, right?"

There was a pause. I heard the faint whistle of the kettle on the stove, but not his tread when he came back into the room. He stood over me and smiled.

"Yes," he said, and then dropped a tea towel on my head.

By the time I'd flung it off, he'd gone back into the kitchen. "Good," I said.

***

I woke up in a strange bed with the fuzziness of a hangover lingering behind my eyes and a nasty metallic taste in my mouth that I attributed to the whiskey of the night before. I lay still, the blankets heaped high over my head, until I felt too hot. Then I dragged myself up into a sitting position, and looked around the room.

The curtains were drawn, but I could see from the glow of light through the fabric that it was daylight. I couldn't remember what time we'd gone to bed. Or rather, when I'd gone to bed, since this was the only one in the house and Till had insisted loudly and drunkenly that, as a guest, I should take the bed and he would sleep – where? I couldn't remember that, either.

Guilt nagged at me as I got up and stumbled out into the living room. He'd taken the seat cushions from the couch and placed them on the floor, and slept on that. It must have been extremely uncomfortable. I could have curled up on the couch quite happily, without having to dismantle the damn thing. But Till was stubborn, and when I was drunk I was easily persuaded. I only hoped that I'd had the presence of mind not to suggest that Till shared the bed with me. Apparently I did that a lot when I was drunk. I'm sure that, most of the time, it was meant in a completely innocent and friendly way. Not very many people believed this, though.

I wandered around the house, slowly coming to the realisation that Till wasn't there. Wondering if he'd decided to sleep in the rocking chair, I went out onto the porch and took a deep breath of fresh air. My t-shirt stank of cigarette smoke, and so it was a relief to breathe in something more pleasant. I yawned and stretched and scratched, and then I noticed the folded towel on the rocking chair.

Puzzled, I stared at it, as if it could tell me where Till had gone. Then my brain clicked into gear and I remembered what he'd told me, and I looked towards the lake. Beyond the reed-bed of waving green was the silvery-blue water. I could see a couple of ducks riding the chop of the waves, their dark heads close to their bodies, but I couldn't see Till.

Now I was concerned. I ventured down the steps from the porch and onto the grass, wrapping my arms around my body as the morning breeze hit me. It was cold: much colder than last weekend, and far colder than any morning in Berlin, where the smog from burning coke ensured microclimatic warmth. This pure air crap was another reason why I disliked the country. It made everything so much colder, especially this far north.

I didn't want to go shouting his name. It would be too silly. So I went a bit closer to the shore and peered in both directions, as if I were waiting on the pavement to cross Prenzlauer Allee. The ducks drifted away from me, their heads turning, their tails flicker-wriggling. I let my gaze linger on them for a moment, following their direction, and then I looked along the shore again.

To my left, the land met the water in a mess of brown reeds, green grass-spikes and silver birch, plus some other trees I couldn't identify. I wondered if Till's willow stand was amongst them. I shrugged and decided it was too cold for me to hang around outside. I would be useful and make some coffee.

I went into the kitchen and tipped a couple of handfuls of coffee beans into the grinder. While it whirred and shook, I hunted out a large saucepan and filled it with water, and then put it on to boil. I briefly wondered about cooking breakfast – there was a pound of butter in the fridge this time – and then decided against it. I helped myself to an apple instead, and ate it as I put the cushions back onto the couch.

Finally I went back out onto the porch and looked towards the lake, and there at last I saw Till.

To be honest I hadn't really thought about him as a swimmer. Even though he'd told me that he used to be good, for me swimming was about jumping in the pool and splashing around and trying not to drown. I could swim, but my style consisted of a half-hearted front crawl that would inevitably dwindle to dogpaddle. At school, I didn't quite get why I should race up and down the pool when it was quicker to get out and walk along the side. And there was always some show-off kid who thought that he'd mastered the weird, wiggly butterfly stroke. It always looked like a caterpillar having a fit, and the kid would tire after three yards and retreat to the side of the pool, grinning bashfully while the girls all sighed and the rest of us kicked water at him in disgust.

Till could do butterfly and make it look effortless, as if he were a salmon curving from the water. I'd never seen it performed properly before, and so for a long time I just stood there and watched, the half-eaten apple clutched in my hand. There was something hypnotic about it: the leap-plunge, leap-plunge; the perfect scything motion in the impossible balance between arms and legs; and that sinuous wriggle in between. There's something about butterfly that impresses the hell out of everyone. It makes front crawl look silly, back crawl clumsy, and breaststroke plain pedestrian.

It's also immensely fast. He disappeared out of my line of vision, leaving a silvery wake to disturb the ducks. I remembered my apple, and took another bite. It tasted better, suddenly.

By the time I'd finished and hurled the apple core into the hedgerow, Till had swum back to shore. He stayed in the shallows for a while, rolling in the water before he stood up and waded through the reeds.

I watched him; and then stared.

He was naked.

I think my jaw sagged in awe. Not just at the fact that he was naked, nor at the fact that he didn't seem to care that I was standing there staring like a fish, but because he really was magnificent. He actually looked bigger naked than when he was clothed. He couldn't hide behind black wool and cotton and denim, and his hair was scraped back from his forehead, leaving his face as bare as the rest of him. I'd never seen such a deep chest before, or such massive shoulders. It contrasted oddly with what I already knew of him. Naked and unselfconscious, he wasn't the shy, uncommunicative man who took an hour to say a single sentence. He was somebody different; somebody I didn't know yet.

The fact that he had this whole different facet to his personality was, for me, incredibly exciting. He was also very, very sexy. And he didn't even know it! At least, I don't think he did. Not with me: not back then. In fact, his nudity in front of me was completely devoid of eroticism or even a hint of sexuality on his part, for all that I stared and stared and began to covet.

"Good morning," he said, unfazed by my gawping.

I dragged my gaze upwards and focused on his face. I hoped I wasn't blushing, although I certainly wasn't ashamed for looking at such a fabulous sight. I said, "Do you always do this? At this time of day? I mean, swimming? And, uh -"

Till came up the steps onto the porch and took the towel from the rocking chair, bent his head, and then shook it sharply, like a dog. Then he started to rub his hair dry before he started on his body.

"Yes," he said as he worked. "Unless I have company, I swim every morning."

"You have company today," I pointed out. "Me."

He flicked the towel over his shoulders and dried his back, arching his spine so that his ribcage thrust out. "Not that kind of company," he said, but kindly.

"Oh. Er, yes. Hrrm," I managed, still staring. I'd given up trying to be surreptitious. Blatant approval seemed to be the best option. "You really are good," I said, and it came out as sounding a bit shocked.

Till let the towel dangle from one hand, then he brought it back to his front and began to dry his arms. "You didn't believe me."

I shrugged lightly. "I've never seen anyone do butterfly like that before."

"Yes. Well. That was how I was taught."

"Why didn't you go on with it? I don't know anything about swimming, but I can recognise talent. Why did you give it up?" I asked, leaning back against the railing of the porch and watching the towel snug itself into his armpit and then down across his ribs. The other end of the towel patted at his thigh. I didn't know which end was the luckiest. I'd certainly never expected to be envious of a towel. My mind was so occupied with such inanities that I didn't see the shuttered expression come into his eyes. I didn't even register the slight movements of his body that later I'd learn to recognise as characteristic of his withdrawal from the conversation or situation.

He paused, and lowered the towel a little. "I didn't give up. Not by choice. I was… retired."

The sharp, tight tone of his voice told me not to push this any further, but like a fool I did. I couldn't help myself. I wanted to know: "Why?"

"I tore my stomach muscles."

I glanced down and stared at his stomach, fascinated. His skin was darker than mine, with an arrowing of hair from chest to groin. The muscles there were contoured – not hard, but not entirely soft, either. A series of scars scrolled across his flesh, stark silver-white and warm pink. For a brief moment I desperately wanted to touch them, to stroke them with my fingertips.

He saw where I was looking, and gave me a twisted smile. "The damage is mostly internal."

"Then," I frowned, gesturing at the scars, "where did they come from?"

He looked at me, his expression utterly unreadable.

I didn't understand. Not at once. And then I looked again, and closer, and realised that the scars that spidered across his belly didn't always follow the line of his muscles, like wood scored against the grain.

I looked up at him, and hunted for something to say. There was nothing, and so all I could do was turn away and stare at the lake.

I heard him take breath, and then he continued towelling himself down. I could see him move into my line of sight from time to time, but I couldn't bring myself to look directly at him. It hurt that such a beautiful thing should damage itself. I couldn't understand why he wanted to add insult to injury. It was beyond my reasoning and experience, and it made me angry.

My reaction was obviously nothing new or unexpected. Till wrapped the towel around his waist, high enough that it hid the scars, and then he came towards me. He was hesitant, as if afraid of me.

"Paul, are you -"

"I was looking at the ducks," I said over him.

"They're not ducks." He came to rest beside me. I could see the broad expanse of his chest, the hair damp and flattened by the water. "They're grebes."

"How do you know that?" I leaned forwards over the porch, both hands on the railing, to stare at the dark birds on the lake. "They look like ducks to me."

Till's fringe fell forwards as he tilted his head. Wet tendrils obscured his eyes, but this time he didn't brush them back. "Definitely great-crested grebes. Look carefully: they have longer necks than mallards. And they have a sort of tufty, angular head. The male has a crest, too. They're beautiful creatures."

I shielded my eyes with my hands and watched as one of the birds reared back in the water, flapping its wings. Its throat and belly were pale, I realised with a little start of surprise.

"It's white underneath!" I said. "It looked dark when it was on the water."

"A lot of things look different on the water," he said softly.

I gave him a sharp glance, but he'd already turned away.

"Did you put something on the stove?" he asked. "I think it's boiling over."

I dashed for the kitchen. "Shit!"

***

After breakfast and coffee, he said he had to do some work and would I mind very much? I said no, of course not; and so we went back out onto the porch. Till opened a wooden box and took out a tool kit, and then he deliberated over which commission he should finish first.

"You never make them one at a time?" I wondered.

"Does any artist?" He sounded surprised by the question. "Perhaps there are people who do it like that. I can't."

I looked at the half-dozen or so pieces in varying stages of completion: baskets, a chair, and a strange twisted thing that looked like the knotted and shaped bread of harvest festival. "They're all so different. I suppose you go from one to the other to stop yourself from getting bored."

He shook his head and grimaced. "Not really. It's just that I have so many commissions that when a new one comes in, I feel the need to start work on it; to say that I've begun. Less to do with boredom and more to do with a sense of guilt."

I considered him in silence. Now fully clothed, his dark hair almost dry, he still seemed unlike the man I'd known yesterday. Oh, there were overlaps, a Venn diagram of care and guilt and humour, but this Till was no more substantial than any of the others. It fascinated me, this ability he had to shift gears and become, not somebody else, but more or less of himself.

Long ago I'd learned to always be myself, because if I hid too much then I always had the expectation that someone special would come along and uncover those hidden things. And nobody had bothered looking for them, let alone found them; and so to avoid disappointment I'd decided to be as upfront as I could bear to be.

I wondered if Till wanted someone to find him, or at least if he wanted someone to realign all those fractured pieces of personality.

It was too soon to go asking that sort of question; and besides, it was the kind of question that shouldn't be asked in words, but in actions.

I followed him down from the porch and watched as he pulled a shallow tray from beneath the overhang of the boards. It was half-full of water, and several canes of willow about five feet long lay submerged. Till raised one from the tray and tested its give between thumb and forefinger, and then he collected up all the canes and spread them on the grass.

I patted the lawn beside him. The ground was dry, and so I sat down and crossed my legs, leaning my chin on my hands to watch him. He seemed to have forgotten that I was there as he sorted through the withies, placing them into groups according to their colour. I was surprised by the fact that there was something more than tree-coloured.

"Why do you use willow?" I asked, shifting closer to him. I poked through the rods, numbering them as my fingers walked over the shifting, clattering pile. "You can make baskets from other stuff, can't you?"

"Yes. You can use hazel, but I don't like the feel of it in my hands. Willow is best. Not just because of its physical properties, either," Till said, and then he looked at me, quietly amused. "I seem to remember that you weren't much interested in this discussion the last time we had it."

"Hey," I said, slightly offended, "that's not true."

"You said you were bored."

"I did not! You assumed that I would be bored. And I'm not. I want to know."

He sat back on his heels and smiled at me. "Okay. Willow is a chthonic tree, sacred to Hekate and the underworld goddesses. It symbolises death and rebirth. The Druids used it in funerary rituals."

"Like in _The Wicker Man_?"

"Yes. Exactly." He was trying not to laugh. "It's supposed to ward off evil."

"Wouldn't do you much good if you were inside the wicker man. It would just make you burn quicker," I said. "Have you ever made a wicker man?"

His shoulders heaved with silent laughter. "No. Not a proper Druidic one."

"Not much call for it these days, I suppose." I stretched out on the grass next to him and lay flat on my back, enjoying the sunlight. The sky was cloudless: a deep widening gulf of blue. I felt wonderfully lazy, and utterly at peace.

"Is that why you like it so much?" I asked again. "Because it wards off evil?"

"One of the reasons."

Till got up and fetched a partially completed basket from the porch. I rolled onto my side to watch as he started on the seemingly complicated process of meshing the new rods into place. He pulled the toolbox towards him and took out an awl, then tapped at the end of the cane.

"My mother had a wicker footstool, once," I said. "The cushion was always falling off it, and it squeaked."

"Told you that willow talks," he said, glancing up at me. His hair was in his eyes, and he brushed it back impatiently.

"So what's it saying?"

We both listened as he twisted the cane into shape, holding it down with one hand as he reached back for a second rod to mate it with. They made a solid, dull sound unlike the dry, hollow squeak of our footstool.

"It says," Till said softly, "that this rod is entirely the wrong one to go in here." He tugged it out of the basket and set it aside, taking up another cane instead.

"I don't know if our footstool ever warded off evil," I continued idly. "I used it to ward off my sister a couple of times. Not that she was evil or anything."

Till snorted. "It's just a story, Paul. A piece of folklore."

"But you believe it, right?" I propped myself on my elbows to stare at him.

He shrugged a little, and changed the subject slightly: "Solzhenitsyn said that the Germans were like willow."

I snorted. "What, in that we bend whichever way the wind blows?"

Till lifted his head and gave me a measuring look. "Is that what you think?"

I sat up, a slither of unease curling in my belly. I had to remind myself that I didn't really know this man as well as I thought I did, and that I should watch my mouth. I picked up a piece of cut-off cane and poked it into the grass, saying, "No. Not really. I suppose Solzhenitsyn meant something else."

He bent his head to his task once more. "He meant that, no matter how many times we get cut back, we keep on growing. It rather depends on your own personal philosophy as to whether that's a good thing or a bad thing."

"Oh, a good thing," I said without thinking.

"I knew you'd say that."

"Well, I don't agree with him. I don't care if he won the Nobel Prize or not, I don't think we're like willow."

"You are, I think," Till said, slowly. "Willow is tough from the moment it springs up. It can take root anywhere suitable. It's flexible and no, it doesn't bend whichever way the wind blows. And it's -"

He petered off into silence, and looked embarrassed.

"What?" I asked, curious. "What is it?"

"It's, uh, it's pretty. The willow. It's beautiful."

I tried to work out if that was a backhanded compliment. The way he was suddenly paying so much attention to his work suggested that yes, it had been intended as such. I felt happy, a warm fuzz of pleasure settling over me.

"Okay, so I'm a willow," I said. "I can live with that. But you – You aren't a willow. You have to be something else. Wouldn't it be a kind of cannibalism if you were a willow making baskets out of your own kind? Tree cannibalism. Or tree torture. Something like that."

Till chuckled. "You do talk crap."

"Yes. I like to think I've elevated it to an art form. But don't interrupt me, I'm thinking. I know fuck-all about trees."

He pointed towards the wood with the business end of the awl. "There's some over there. I'll tell you what they are, town mouse."

I sniffed. "I'm not completely ignorant, you know. I know the difference between a silver birch and a holly tree."

"Holly isn't a tree, it's a bush."

"Whatever. It has leaves on it. That makes it a tree," I said dismissively, hearing him laugh again at my cavalier attitude towards nature. "You'd be something…" I tried to think of an adjective to describe him, came up with a handful of possibilities, and then rejected all of them. "Not an oak tree."

"A linden," he suggested, eyebrows raised in appreciation of this silly game.

I wrinkled my nose. "Too obvious." I stared at the endless blue sky above me, and then at the dark green rustle of the shifting treetops. "An elm," I said at last. "That's what you are. You're an elm."

He looked startled; raised a hand to his face, fingers trembling. Then he shook his head sharply so that his hair fell forwards, and bent even closer over the willow.

I cursed myself for being so stupid.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, and then I stood up. "I didn't mean it like that, Till."

He nodded, but did not look up. "I know."

I scuffed my heels in the grass, and then asked, "Do you want some coffee?"

***

Hunched on the porch, a cup of coffee between my hands, I watched Till weave for the rest of the day. Sometimes he sat on the top step and balanced the base between his knees, the willow spread out in a fan behind him. Then I would sit in the rocking chair and study his profile; the gloss of his hair; and the movement of his arms. At other times, he would drag out an old three-legged milking stool and would sit on that, his knees touching the ground and the untidy grass of the lawn littered with three colours of willow rods and the glitter of awls and pliers and saws.

Only after I'd watched him complete one piece and start on another did I ask him, "Is it difficult?"

He didn't look up. "Not really. You just need to be patient."

"I would be rubbish at it, then," I said with a laugh.

"I think you have patience," Till said after a moment. "You've been patient with me today."

"That's because this is new and relatively interesting," I said. "If I were to watch you for another day or so, then I'd probably be bored stupid. This isn't the way I normally spend my Sundays."

He rolled the basket aside and set it down on the ground, and then he got up and walked to the shore of the lake. I watched as he broke off a number of reeds, gathering the long stems tight together in one hand, and then he returned to the porch and sat on the steps, facing me.

"Tell me what you usually do," he said, and it was a command rather than a request. He half-smiled in encouragement, looking at me even as his fingers deftly sorted, selected and rejected stems from the small pile of reeds set across his knees.

"Oh," I said, checking my watch, "I'd get up around about now, and if I was at the apartment then I'd make sure that Flake was still alive and not passed out in the bath, because he likes to go there when he's drunk, I don't know why. And then we'd fight over who was going to fetch the milk. He always loses, because I don't like going out of the house on my own -"

"Why?" Till asked.

That gave me pause. "I don't know," I said, although I knew perfectly well. "It's just always been that way," I added; even though that wasn't true either.

He frowned at me and broke off one of the reed stems with his teeth, then threaded it through the object beginning to take shape in his hands. "You're agoraphobic?"

"No. Not really. I just don't like going anywhere on my own." It sounded stupid when I said it out loud, but it was a real enough panic.

"You came here," he pointed out.

"Yes. But I was on the train. There were lots of people. And it's not so far from here to the station."

He looked up at me from beneath the wings of his hair and said, "Paul, it's almost a mile from the station to here. Whatever it is that you're afraid of, it's not the countryside."

I put down my mug. The coffee had gone cold anyway, and I could only drink it when it was hot. "Well," I said feebly, "maybe you have some weird magnetism that makes me forget that I'm supposed to be panicking."

He laughed. "I wish!"

"It seems to be the case," I said. "Of course, now I'll think about it and be too scared to move from here, so thanks for that."

"Tell me what else you'd do if you were in the city," he said, to distract me.

I nudged the mug with my foot, pushing it along the wooden boards. "I'd go out for lunch. Meet some friends. Maybe play guitar, do something with the band. That depends on Aljoscha. A lot depends on Aljoscha. Usually my Sundays end with me going back to his place and…" I shrugged, embarrassed. "Well. You know."

Till straightened up, wriggling his shoulders. "I didn't know."

"Oh." I couldn't look at him, and so studied my toes with great interest.

He tilted his head to one side, curious. "You going to tell me about it?"

"No," I said, crossing my legs. "Not yet. There needs to be some mystery here, or else, uh -" I tailed off, realising that I'd just done what I swore I'd never do again. I'd given myself a secret and practically invited him to tease it out of me.

He mistook my confusion, and said, "I won't get bored with you, Paul. You don't need to dangle lures in front of me. I like you anyway."

I gazed at him, perplexed; and then I smiled. "Thanks."

He nodded and then bent over his work again. Within five minutes it was finished – a reed ball, about the size of a cricket ball, all woven and plaited, absolutely perfect. He batted it from one hand to the other, and I watched, impressed.

"That's amazing," I said. "You're so fast. So clever."

"I could tie you up in knots," he said with a smile, and tossed me the ball.

I caught it; and told him quite honestly, "You already do."


	3. sheath and knife

I knew I was in trouble when I started to dream about him. Not daydreams, because I daydream all the time and about all kinds of people; and not sexy dreams, either, although there were a couple of those that either made me blush to recall them or that excited me enough to weave them into a daydream fantasy, the kind of thing I needed to think about when I was in bed with Aljoscha.

No, I mean real dreams. He would wander through them: sometimes silent, sometimes smiling, and I would wake up and feel a little empty, as if I were missing something. Usually I would decide that I was just hungry, and would go and raid the kitchen, but underneath it all I knew that there was more to it. It wasn't food I wanted.

One evening I came home and fell asleep on the couch, and entertained Flake for an hour with sleep-talking. I do this a lot, but usually there's not somebody wide- awake listening to me ramble on. Flake decided to test a theory he'd heard: that a sleeping man can't tell a lie. I only woke up when I heard him laughing, and the laughter in my dream was sort of out of sync with what I could actually hear.

"What?" I demanded groggily, half-rolling on the couch and then grabbing at a cushion to stop myself from falling onto the floor. "You woke me up. Bastard."

Flake was sitting cross-legged on his chair, one hand over his mouth as he continued to laugh at me. He's so polite sometimes.

I sat up and swallowed. My mouth was dry, which I'd learnt from experience was a sign of too much talking. I had the vague feeling that I'd heard my own voice when I was asleep – my real voice, that is, not a dream voice. Hard to explain the difference, but it's one of sensation rather than actual knowledge. So I was suspicious of Flake's laughter, because I've been known to talk some real crap when I'm asleep. Worse than when I'm awake, I mean.

"What is it? What did I say?" I glared at him and rubbed a hand through my hair, trying to flatten it down.

He gleamed at me. "Not telling. You really are the most outrageous liar, Paul."

"I thought you said I couldn't lie when I was asleep?"

"You can't. I meant, the lies you tell when you're awake are outrageous." Flake propped his chin on his hand and continued to gaze at me in a most disquieting fashion. "What you say when you're asleep is a different matter entirely."

I felt a worm of unease wriggle down my spine. I didn't often feel guilty or paranoid, but Flake's teasing made me very edgy. "You asked something about me and Aljoscha, didn't you."

He touched his spectacles, adjusting the frames. "Oh, I know you still respect him…"

I raised my eyebrows. "But?"

"You've never really cared for him, have you." Flake's voice indicated that this wasn't a question. He already knew: I'd already given him an answer in my sleep.

"Look," I said, moving the cushion behind me and leaning forwards, "I never pretended that I did. He knows that. He knows how it is. What we have – It's just a business arrangement. It's convenient."

"For him, maybe. But not for you." Flake tilted back his head so he could look down his nose at me. He did supercilious very well, and it never failed to irritate me.

"What would you do?" I snapped. "Tell me, Flake: what would you do?"

"I'd be grateful for anything that came my way."

I nearly laughed at that, but stopped myself. It was true: Flake was quiet and shy and cynical, plus he hadn't been gifted with compensatory good looks. He'd always been honest in his envy of my luck with girls, although I tried to tell him that women were won over not by looks but by conversation.

I don't know how true that is, but for a while Flake did try to talk to girls at parties rather than stand in a corner and glare at them. And occasionally, it got results: and then he would dote on the lucky lady for weeks or months on end, until her patience wore thin. He genuinely believed that there were a finite number of people he could attract, and so he had a tendency to cling to them even when it was clear that they weren't right for him. I did try to tell him about this, but he wouldn't listen.

"I am grateful," I smiled, to stave off the sudden glare of enmity in his eyes.

Flake shook his head. "You have a funny way of showing it. I don't know how you do it, Paul. I don't know how you can say one thing to somebody and then the same thing to somebody else, and mean it to both of them. Surely one is a lie?"

I shrugged. "I have a lot of affection to give."

"Affection!"

We sat in silence for a moment, and then I said, "You've never criticised the way I live my life before. What's changed?"

"You have." Flake got up abruptly from his chair and paced across the cracked lino of the floor. "Or maybe I have. I don't know. It's just… I think it's unfair, what you're doing to Aljoscha."

I slung an arm along the back of the couch and turned to watch him. "I am not doing anything to Aljoscha! If anything, it's the other way around."

"I don't want to know." Flake put his hands over his ears and grimaced at whatever unpleasant mental image I'd just given him.

"Oh, so you didn't ask me about sex when I was asleep?" I teased, squirming around on the couch so I was draped over the back of it, my chin resting on the scrubby upholstery.

Flake let his hands drop to his sides again. "Your affections. You're too free with them."

"I'm not a slut."

"I didn't say you were. You can be affectionate with someone and not sleep with them," he said patiently. "But there's affection and there's affection. And some people confuse affection for love, and then they get hurt."

I stared. "Flake, what the fuck are you saying?"

He scrunched up his face as if pained. "I'm not sure. Just that you should be careful."

"You think I should concentrate on one relationship at a time," I said, keeping my voice neutral. "I get bored, Flake. You know that. I don't mean to hurt people. And it's not just about boredom, either – once I meet somebody new, and I like them even a little bit, then I want to spend time with them. I'd feel guilty if I didn't -"

"You're always meeting somebody new. Always starting something new."

"It's less to do with boredom and more to do with a sense of guilt." I spoke without thinking, and then when my brain caught up with my mouth, I realised who had been the author of those words, and I was hit by a shaft of panic and joy as I realised that Till and I weren't so different in some respects.

Flake stared at me. "Who said that?"

I bristled. "I did. Just now."

"You sounded like you were quoting someone. Is it -"

The telephone rang, and I lunged over the back of the couch, nearly tipping it over, in order to answer it. Flake was closer. He snatched up the receiver and said, "Hello?" and then scowled and hauled the phone on its cable across to me. "Country mouse."

I took the telephone and dropped myself back onto the cushions. "Hi, Till."

"Your flatmate doesn't like me."

"Oh, I don't know." I glanced up to see Flake lurking surreptitiously behind his bedroom door. "He probably does like you. It's just me that he's annoyed with."

"Really? And why's that?"

I wished I could tell him, but I wasn't entirely sure myself. "I talk too much," I said eventually; and that at least was true.

"I don't find that annoying."

I laughed a little breathlessly. "You haven't known me a fortnight yet."

"Speaking of which," he said rather casually, "I was wondering…"

"I'd love to. But we have a gig on Saturday night."

"Oh." He was silent for a heartbeat. "Can you – Sorry, I never asked: Do you work? Can you come on Friday morning?"

I hated my job. "Yes. To both. I'll see you on Friday."

When I put the phone back on its table and tidied away the cable, Flake called from behind the door, "I hope you didn't forget the concert. I'm not your social diary, you know."

I was offended. "The band comes first, Flake."

He came out of his room and gave me a hard stare. "Does it?"

***

As things turned out, I couldn't leave Berlin until past eleven o'clock, which meant that I had to change in Schwerin and wait for the local train. I sat on a bench on the platform and idly combed through my hair with my fingers, examining my reflection in the station window. I always wonder how I look to other people. It's not that I want everyone to fancy me, or anything – I'm not that vain – but it's nice to know that you're being looked at. Admired. That's why I bleached my hair and wore weird clothes. Because people look at you, then, even if it is only in disgust. And then you feel less lonely, because at least you're not invisible anymore.

I thought about Till and how he seemed to like being invisible; and how the only time he'd seemed halfway normal was when he'd just come out of the lake, and even then he wasn't completely normal because he'd been naked; and as soon as he'd put his clothes on then he was invisible again, and – God, he confused me!

The train was delayed. I checked my watch and saw midday slip away. I don't usually worry about things like that, but I fretted that Till would think I wasn't coming, or worse still, that I'd forgotten about him.

I didn't want him to think badly of me.

I cursed the train and waited, impatiently.

***

He was leaving just as I arrived. He didn't acknowledge me, even though he looked right at me: Why should he? He didn't know who I was, and I knew him only by reputation. He was nothing like I'd imagined. I stood on the gravel and watched as he drove away, as if by looking at the father I would understand the son.

When the sound of the car engine had faded, I went around to the back of the house to find Till. He was sitting in the rocking chair, his hands gripping his wrists, his gaze fixed on nothing. Until that day I'd never seen true despair. It was like a gigantic noise blotting out everything else, even though Till was utterly silent. The only sound came from the chair, creaking as he rocked it back and forth.

I came up onto the porch and put down my bag. I looked at him, then at the lake, the trees, the baskets, and then back at him. He didn't seem to see me. The blankness and his silence disturbed me. Even when I don't know what to do, I try to do something, regardless of whether it's right or wrong – but this time I genuinely didn't know what to do.

The silence stretched out. It was too uncomfortable, so I said the first thing that came into my head: "Was that your father?"

He stopped rocking. Without the creak of the chair, the silence got deeper.

"Till?"

"Get me a drink."

His voice sounded as if it came from far away. He didn't look at me. Nevertheless, it was something that he'd spoken to me. I went into the kitchen and looked around, deciding that by 'drink' he probably meant alcohol rather than coffee. I found an unopened bottle of vodka in a cupboard and carried it out to him.

He took it without a word of thanks, and then spent a long time staring at it as if he suspected that it had beamed down from Mars. Finally he opened the cap and took a long swallow from the bottle, not caring that the vodka spilled down his chin and soaked into his sweater.

"I can get you a glass. And some ice, maybe," I offered, for something to say.

He grimaced and shook his head. He started the chair rocking again.

I rubbed my hand across the back of my neck. Obviously he wanted to be left alone. Obviously I was just in the way. I considered my options, and decided that I couldn't justify leaving him.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I tried, desperately.

Nothing. Not a flicker. Just that damn rocking chair creaking as it moved.

"Fine," I said. "We don't have to, you know. Just trying to help. Just…"

He took another swig of vodka. As he lowered the bottle, something seemed to get through to him. The chair stopped abruptly. Till turned his head towards the house, his eyes suddenly focusing and sharpening.

I was slow in following his gaze, but I caught on quick enough.

Suddenly he was out of the chair and across the porch, his movements so fast and deliberate that it all seemed predestined. Out of the carefully stacked finished pieces of basketry, he pulled the best and most beautiful of his commissions, and he hurled it from the porch onto the lawn.

By now I knew with appalled certainty what he planned to do, and I stood squawking his name in impotent plea and demand: "Till. Till? Till!"

He went onto the grass, slowly, elegant in loathing. He stared down at the ribs of willow and kicked it: once, twice. The rods snapped; the braiding unravelled. Shattered withies reached up to him in broken subjugation, but still it wasn't enough. He splashed the vodka over it, his expression dead yet so close to an edge he didn't trust himself to fall from.

And then he clicked open his lighter and dropped it down onto the mess of willow and vodka, and he burned one of his own creations.

I found myself on the grass beside him, worried in case he got too close to the flames, in case he tried to take back his sacrifice. He didn't. He just stood there and watched, tears running down his face, wounded too deeply to vocalise his loss.

I wanted him to shout and yell, to kick things again. I understood that. I didn't like these silent tears, this imploding rage. It scared me. It reminded me of times and places in my own life that I didn't want to remember. It felt like abandonment. More than that, I wanted to cry for him, because he couldn't do it properly.

I reached out to touch him. He pulled away and fled from me, hugging himself into obscurity as he retreated down the garden towards the lake.

"Till," I shouted after him, terrified that he would do something really stupid, like try to drown himself. He reached the reed-bed and then hesitated, hearing I suppose the note of desperation in my voice. He almost turned his head to look at me.

"Come back?" I asked, and my throat closed on the words. I couldn't bear to stand there any longer, so I shook my head savagely and went inside the house. I snapped on the television and slumped onto the couch, and then stared at the screen for hours, too afraid to go back outside.

***

He came back.

It was evening. The sun had gone from the room, and it was turning cold. I was watching the news with desultory interest when I heard his tread across the porch. I looked up and saw him standing on the threshold between the kitchen and living room. He seemed so tired and small. I managed a half-smile, and it was enough. He came across the room and sat next to me. We watched the television together in silence.

When the programme was over, he said, "Sorry."

"It's okay."

Till shook his head. I noticed that his hair was wet. I wondered if he'd gone into the lake after all. He still wouldn't look at me.

"It's not okay. I'm sorry." He stretched out a little and yawned. "God."

"You should go to bed," I suggested. "You must be exhausted."

"Yes. In a minute."

He nudged closer to me, and I understood that he was desperate for reassurance. Belatedly, I realised that he must trust me, or at least feel comfortable enough in my presence, to let his emotions slip like this. I felt both honoured and afraid by the knowledge.

I didn't know whether I should hug him or what. I settled for putting my arm across the couch behind him, so I wasn't touching him but he'd still know that I was there, and then he leaned back against me and rested his head on my arm.

I could feel the damp from his wet hair. Faintly I could smell cold and mud. The position was uncomfortable: either we'd have to get closer, or I would have to move my arm. Already my fingers tingled with the onset of pins and needles, and my shoulder ached from the contorted pose, but I felt bad pulling away so soon.

Till murmured something and shifted, curling up and tucking his chin against his chest. I edged sideways to give him some room, letting him slip down onto the couch. His arms folded inwards and he seemed to shrink, to become something tiny and protected.

I grabbed a cushion and gave it to him. "Here," I said in an almost-whisper.

He took it from me and hugged it to his chest. That wasn't actually what I'd intended, so I prised it away from him and stuffed it under his head as a pillow. Better that he used the cushion as a pillow rather than my thigh. Better, and much safer.

He fell asleep like a car-crash, sudden and total, in deep from emotional exhaustion. I tend to fall asleep in increments as my mind slows down from the whirl of the day, but Till switched himself off, straight into oblivion. I almost envied that, but I was also pleased that he'd fallen asleep so swiftly, because it meant that I could look at him.

Flake will tell you that whenever I find something that intrigues me, I like to touch it. This holds true for all manner of things, from a guitar to a seashell to a foodstuff to another human being. The desire to touch has got me into trouble a few times, so I'd been really careful not to touch Till. I didn't want him getting the wrong idea about me. Well, I did, but I wanted him to want the same sort of wrong as I did.

And there he was, fast asleep and within the reach of my hand. I'd wanted to touch him almost from the start: I wanted to touch his hair, his mouth, the shadows beneath his eyes, the scars on his face.

I'm not a cautious man. I have an irritating habit of rushing in where angels fear to tread. But that evening, I was afraid to touch him, in case he woke up and banished me from his life. So I sat on the couch and watched him sleep, and tried to find my courage.

After what felt like an hour but was probably no more than ten minutes, I decided that I had to do something. I stretched out my fingers and brushed them, very gently, through the ends of his hair. It was still wet, and I caught a strand between thumb and forefinger. Even through the calluses on my fingers, I felt it: dark and tender with damp, black against my skin.

He didn't move. He was fast asleep. I moved my hand over his face and carefully, gently-gently, touched my middle finger to his mouth. I was probably concentrating a little too hard on not dropping all of my weight through my hand, or he could feel the heat from my skin or something, because as I touched him, Till mumbled something in his sleep and moved his head slightly.

I froze. I knew I should just leave him alone, but when have I ever been sensible? So I carried on. I stroked his lower lip. I thought it would be soft, but instead I could feel the braille of worry where his teeth had bitten.

His lips parted under my touch, and he frowned, shook his head as if trying to shoo me away. I moved my hand and watched him chew at his lower lip. I wondered if he were ticklish. When he settled again, harrumphing himself into deeper sleep, I resumed my exploration.

I touched the scars on his face.

I'd said he was like an elm tree. I hadn't meant to hurt him with that observation. I hadn't thought of the disease that stripped the trees of their leaves and killed the heartwood and pitted the dying bark. But he'd thought of it. I wondered how much cruelty he'd had to endure. At school, the other children had teased me – and not kindly – for being a half-blood, for being a skinny little runt – and although I can't say that it didn't hurt me, I never let it dictate my life. I learned to hide in plain view, to talk and joke and put myself out there, always funny, always smiling – and in the end it didn't hurt anymore.

I couldn't imagine Till doing that.

They weren't so bad, the scars. I'd seen worse. I liked the way they felt beneath my fingertips, softly sensual. It was absurdly sexy, and I let my eyes close, the better to concentrate on the sensation. I stroked his face.

I'd been so intent on the feel of his skin beneath my fingertips that I hadn't registered the change in his breathing. When he was asleep, his breathing was deep and even, and I'd felt each breath against my fingers when I touched his mouth. Now I realised that I could feel the sharper, shallow breaths that came not from the diaphragm but from the chest; no longer peaceful but disturbed.

He was awake.

I jerked into awareness and stared down at him to see the panic die in his eyes. I'd frightened him. I shouldn't have touched him. I wanted to apologise, but how could I? It hadn't felt wrong. He was gorgeous. I'd had to touch him. Surely he could understand that. Surely he would forgive me.

We gazed at each other, mute. Neither of us moved; our bodies rigid with tension and, for me, a certain amount of arousal. Still I couldn't think of a way to explain my behaviour, my fascination. I didn't know if he'd understand after all. He was going to be a difficult object of desire, immune to flattery through his own disbelief.

"I should go to bed," he said softly, and his voice cracked on the last word.

I nodded, too ashamed to say anything.

He eased himself off the couch. The cushion I'd given him as a pillow dropped onto the floor, and he bent to pick it up. He seemed disorientated, almost dizzy, and I watched him anxiously as he walked towards his bedroom, still clutching the cushion. As he reached the door, he stopped and turned his head, not quite able to look at me: "Thank you."

I waited until he'd gone into his room and closed the door behind him before I put my head in my hands and groaned in helpless frustration.

***

Next morning I woke to find the house empty again. Till's bedroom door was wide open, and the sheets were in a tangle at the foot of the bed. There was a towel dropped onto the floor. I freed my left arm from the blankets that cocooned me and saw that it was not quite ten o'clock. I groaned and rolled off the couch onto the floor, and there I put a cushion over my head. It was too early for me to be awake. It was too early for me to admit that I'd spent much of the night thinking about him: about how it had felt to touch him. And it was far too early for me to admit that I badly wanted a wank over this.

I lay on the floor until my erection had calmed enough for me to be able to take a pee, and then I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water at my face and chest in the hope that it would make me sane again. Of course that was never going to happen, but at least I tried. I got dressed and brushed my hair with my fingers – why did I never think to bring a comb? – and scowled at my reflection. My hair was too long: I'd have to ask Flake to shear me again soon.

The scent of roasted coffee beans hung in the kitchen. There was half a pot still warm on the hob, and so I took a mug from the heap in the sink and dried it, then poured myself some coffee. I laced my fingers tight around the ceramic to catch the heat, and leaned against the fridge while I drank.

Outside, I could hear the clatter-snap of the willow on the porch, and then scattered fragments of song, deep and heavy and melodic, occasionally rising to true tenor, but hesitant, as if his concentration were elsewhere:

 _Here I go, and I don't know why I spin so ceaselessly, till I lose my sense of gravity_ –

I was surprised: He was good. I opened the door and went onto the porch, and stood there listening to him as he wandered through another few lines of the song. He used his voice in the same way he worked the willow, twisting it and stretching it out and making it turn back on itself; and then it would swoop down and become a 'hmm-hmm-hmm' sound when he forgot the words or tried a variation on the tune.

It really was remarkable, and so unexpected.

I must have caught his attention, then, because he stopped abruptly, the music trapped in his throat. He looked up, shy, his fringe in his eyes. I wondered if he'd had any sleep: he seemed tired. He said: "Good morning. There's coffee on the stove if you want it."

I lifted the mug to show him. "Found it, thanks." I paused, waited for him to say something more, and then I told him, "You can carry on, you know."

He looked puzzled. "What?"

"Singing," I said. "You were singing just now, when I came out."

"I wasn't."

I smiled. "You were."

I sat down opposite him on the grass. Both of us ignored the patch of scorched earth a few feet away. I noticed that he'd removed the remains of the basket he'd destroyed. I wondered if he'd buried it, or if he'd thrown it into the lake. I'd read that the Vikings did that with their dead: put them in a ship and fired it in glory, and then eventually it would sink and the tide would take it. It struck me as a fitting end for the basket, at any rate; but I wasn't going to enquire after it.

"I can't sing."

I sighed. "Honestly: you can. You have a nice voice. Sing again?"

Till shook his head slightly, and turned back to his work. He was making a new basket. I recognised the design: it was the replacement of the one sacrificed. I knew he wouldn't sing again today, not now that I'd made him so self-conscious, but I decided that we could still talk about it.

"You sing better than Aljoscha."

He smiled, but didn't look at me. "With respect, that wouldn't be hard to do."

I shrugged, unconcerned. "Punk singers don't actually need to sing."

"No," he agreed. "Punk music just needs to be loud. Loud and angry. And to have a message that the masses can relate to. Something apparently simple that's actually quite complex."

"Like anarchy," I suggested.

"Yes." He picked up a withy and regarded it thoughtfully for a moment before he took the pliers and cut the willow into three pieces. "Anarchy, drugs, sex… What were your songs about, again?"

"Um." I thought about it for a while, realising that our songs were so ingrained that they'd become a jumble of words shouted to music rather than anything remotely meaningful. "Well, we have a lot of songs about drinking."

Till chuckled. "Self-referential?"

"Mostly."

He smiled, and then pinned me with his gaze. "Don't you think it gives too much away? Songs, I mean. That they open your soul and invite the audience in to take a look. Like a public dissection."

I'd never thought about it like that before, and told him so. "And anyway," I continued, "everybody knows that we drink too much. Especially Aljoscha. It's expected of us - and the genre, like you said. Loud and angry and popular."

I finished the coffee and set down the mug on the grass, and then hugged my knees to my chest. "Anyway, you have no control over how other people interpret your lyrics. Maybe that's why so many songs are obvious: to stop listeners from misunderstanding. And that's the problem with poetry – too many variables, so much meaning, all very open."

Till was silent for a moment, and then he flipped the basket over and began to work on the other side. "I'm a poet," he said eventually.

"What, like -" I stopped myself. I was going to say, 'like your father' – but the ghost of yesterday was still too tender and I didn't want to upset him. Instead I blustered on, saying: "You're a poet and you can sing. Why the hell are you a drummer?"

He gave me a weary look. "One, I can't sing. Two, I don't want to sing. And three, I happen to like the drums. I used to want to play guitar, but I'm absolutely useless at it. The drums are easier."

I laughed. "The first time I met Aljoscha, I was so sure that I was really cool on the guitar. And he told me that I was crap. I was really annoyed. He told me to come and have a drink with him, that I would improve. For a couple of days I was so pissed off. Well, I was only eighteen and I thought I knew it all. But he was right: I did get better. And maybe I wasn't so bad to start with, at least not as bad as he said I was, but without that goading then maybe I wouldn't have tried harder, and got better, because I wanted to impress him and make him regret what he'd said to me."

Till rolled his shoulders and rubbed the back of his neck. "Sounds like a mindfuck to me," he said. "You still joined his band, after all."

"Yeah." I uncurled from my position and lounged on the grass, pushing aside some of the willow canes. "But that was the thing. I wanted to be in a band, just like Flake did. And Aljoscha had been in loads of bands, so we thought he knew what he was doing. And he did. Kind of."

Till nodded, took up a handful of rods and inspected them closely. "Paul. Last week you said – about Aljoscha – You're with him? I mean -"

I knew what he meant. "Yeah."

"Why?"

It was one hell of a question. I didn't know if I could answer it without me sounding like a whore, or without making Aljoscha sound like a dirty old man. Both of these statements were true to a certain extent, but the reality lay somewhere in the grey area in between.

"It's complicated," was what I actually said.

"Yes. Of course." Till gave me a level glance. "I noticed how he looked at you the other week. He's possessive."

"Aljoscha?" I let out a peal of laughter that didn't quite convince either of us. "Only in that he thinks of me – and Flake – as kind of possessions. There's nothing more to it."

"Oh."

He bit his lip, and I tried not to remember how it had felt last night under my fingertip. Like rough velvet. Oh God. I wriggled on the grass and stared over his shoulder at the hedgerow, which was safe and boring.

I said, "I was pretty naïve when I met him. I didn't realise what he wanted at first. I thought he was an old sot reminiscing about the happy hippy days, right up until the moment he put his feet on my groin and made some joke about having his toes warmed in the lap of a virgin."

Till's voice was as dark as smoke. "And were you?"

I glanced up at him. "A virgin? Yes, I was. In one sense – the one that mattered most to Aljoscha."

We both fell silent, uncertain as to where this conversation was going.

"Did it hurt?"

I gave him a sharp look. With anyone else, I'd suspect them of asking the question purely for kicks, but with Till I got the impression that he was genuinely curious. I tried not to be too hopeful about where his curiosity could lead us.

"It's sex," I said. "Sex doesn't hurt."

He stared at me.

"At least, it's never hurt me." I suddenly realised that I'd put my foot in it again. "It's been a bit boring sometimes, though."

Till hung his head. "Boring. Yes."

More silence followed. I could hear the breeze rustling the hedge. The day was getting warmer, and with the strike of heat from the earth came the smell of the grass, ticklish and green.

I sat up straight and fiddled with the canes in front of me. I looked at him: little darting glances that tried to be surreptitious. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to stroke back the hair from his eyes and show him that it wasn't always boring. I wanted to know how it felt with a man other than Aljoscha. I wanted – desperately – a change in my circumstance. I wanted things to be different.

I wanted Till. But I couldn't have him: couldn't bring myself to proposition him; was unsure of how he'd react. He was the one escape route I had out of Berlin and the whole gilded cage of Feeling B, and I didn't want to risk losing him over something as selfish as sex.

So I sighed and scrubbed my hands through my hair, and decided that the only change I could sensibly make was to get it cut.

"Pardon?" Till said, astonished; and I realised that I'd spoken out loud.

"My hair," I explained quickly. "It's too long."

"I can cut it for you." He shook off the despondent mood he'd sunk into and laughed, picking up the pliers he used for chopping the willow rods down to size.

"No, thank you!" I shook out my hair and grimaced at the length. "God, look at it. Like a mane or something."

He smiled. "I mean it. I'll cut it."

"Not with those, you won't," I said, nodding towards the pliers. "You'd cut my head off."

He dropped the pliers onto the grass, got up, and went into the house. He emerged a few minutes later with a pair of scissors that he held up as he came nearer. "These any better?"

"Much." I tilted my head to look up at him. "Are you sure? I can just as well ask Flake. I mean, he usually does it, and -"

"I'd like to. If you'll let me."

He opened and closed the scissors – snip-snip – and the sunlight flashed off the narrowed blades. I hadn't really thought about it before, but that's what they were. Two knife blades fastened together. The scissors were very sharp. I wondered if he'd ever used them on himself, if any of those spidery scars on his belly had been made by those twin blades.

I shook my head to rid myself of the image, and he stepped back, uncertain.

"You don't want me to?"

"What?" I realised that he'd misread me, and so I smiled up at him. "Yes, yes: Of course you can. You can't be any worse than Flake."

He laughed. "Sit on the stool. It'll be easier. Then you can look at the lake. It's always better to have something nice to look at while you're waiting."

I scrambled up from the grass and dragged the milking stool towards me, sat on it and then shuffled around until I had an uninterrupted vista of the Schweriner See. It was very still today, a great reflective bowl of blue. I fixed my gaze on a group of birds drifting on the water.

"Look," I said, wanting to show off, "grebes."

I could hear his smile. "They're mallards."

"Just testing you," I said. "I knew that."

"Grebes," he said, taking a strand of my hair at the forehead and stroking it back over the crown, "or at least, great-crested grebes, have a crest. It goes like this along the top of their head," and he continued to stroke back, gathering strands of hair tight in his hand until he twisted the ends, flicking it up over the back of my head.

"You can't see it, but that's how the grebe's crest looks," he finished.

"I can feel it," I said, suppressing a shiver at the tight pull of my hair caught in his hand. It wasn't uncomfortable, but it made me want to wriggle. I said, "I'm sure the grebe doesn't know what his crest looks like, but he must be able to feel it, too."

"Probably." Till let go.

"Just don't cut my ears off," I said.

"I'll try not to."

He stood behind me and ran his fingers through my hair from the nape of my neck upwards, the way a real hairdresser does. He did it thoughtfully, lingering at places and rubbing tendrils of hair between thumb and forefinger. I could feel his touch on my scalp, and the ticklish twist as he lifted each section of hair. It raised goosebumps on my arms and stirred my cock into wakefulness. I folded my hands in my lap and stared at the birds – mallards - on the lake.

I heard the hiss of steel unsheathed when he opened the scissors, and then he came closer to me and began to cut.

I'd never considered the sensual possibilities of having one's hair cut. All the elements are there: a degree of trust, physical contact, the stroke and brush of admiration and judgement. It's strange how it feels: the sound of the scissors cutting through my hair was almost a feeling, for it sent waves of tingling awareness into my skull. Then there's the soft tumble of shorn hair onto the shoulders, onto the ground.

I sat and concentrated on the feelings, even as I stared at those damned ducks. I could feel Till move closer to me and then retreat again as he snipped and measured and cut and said 'hmm' and cut some more. I could feel the heat of him, warm against my back: the press of his thigh against my side, his belly against my shoulders.

I kept my hands in my lap and tried not to gasp.

"Do you want any off the back?" he asked, tugging at the length that I usually tied into a ponytail.

Oh God, that was sexy. He'd been so gentle and considerate with the hair over the crown of my head, and so the sharp little tug on the back made me whimper involuntarily. I wanted to keep it at that length, but I wanted to feel his hands on the nape of my neck even more, so I said, "Sure. Cut it all off."

"All?" His fingers twined in my hair and twisted it, as if he were trying to demonstrate just how long it was, how much I'd lose.

I fidgeted. It was getting painful now. His grip on my hair twinged little needle-sparks into my scalp. I wanted to shudder. I pressed down harder on my erection, feeling guilty pleasure dart through me. Did he know? Could he tell?

"Just chop it off," I said, my voice breathless and high-pitched. I cringed at how fucking obvious my body was being. He would have to be blind, deaf and insensate not to realise how much I wanted him.

Apparently he was all of those things, or else he was just very polite, or not interested in me, or something like that. Maybe he thought I was a pervert for getting off on the fact that he was cutting my hair, I don't know. By that stage I wasn't particularly bothered: I just wanted it over with, so I could run off and have a wank.

"There. It's done." His voice had dropped by what sounded like an octave and came out dark and growly. "Wait."

I sat absolutely still and tried not to breathe as he brushed the clipped hair from my shoulders. I could see it tumble onto the grass, whitish-blond against the deep green. Then all rational thought left my head as he leaned down and blew across the nape of my neck.

I made a strangled sound.

"It tickles?" he asked softly.

"Yes," I said, struggling to control myself. "Does it look good?"

Till stepped away from me and dropped the scissors onto the grass. "There's a mirror in the bathroom."

Released, I staggered up from the stool and hurried towards the house. Blind need consumed me. I didn't care if he saw how hard I'd got. I didn't care what he thought of me for it. I just had to come.

I slammed the bathroom door closed and lay against it for a second, the breath catching in my lungs. Then I was across the floor and grabbing for a handful of toilet paper, unzipping my trousers and starting to wank myself off, gasping as if I'd been kicked in the stomach.

My mind was fevered. I wanted him to come after me, to knock on the door to see if I were all right, to see me like this and – what would he do?

"Oh God," I said, and imagined: Till smiling at me, reaching out to touch me, to stroke me; squeezing my cock in those big, clever hands – _oh fuck yes_ – and more: dropping onto his knees, my hands in his hair, that soft dark hair around my fingers; Till looking up at me, shy, lustful, wicked – _nearly there_ – the feel of his mouth around me, the tickle of his fringe on my belly, on the base of my cock; how I would hold him down, touch his scars, and oh, his mouth, how fucking beautiful -

I came with a startled 'oh' of pleasure.

Trembling, I hung over the toilet for a moment or two. My knees were shaking. I panted for breath, feeling the sweat prickle the back of my neck. I was stabbed by sharp little points of shorn hair. I wished I'd said something to him. I felt empty, hungry, starving.

I cleaned myself up and flushed the toilet, then went to the sink and turned on the cold tap. I let the water run over my hands until the skin went numb. It cooled me slightly. After a minute or so, I turned off the tap and wiped my hands dry on my trousers.

Finally I looked into the mirror and saw what he'd done with my hair. It was choppy, roughly layered. It suited me. He'd been so careful. He'd really thought about it as he worked. I realised that I'd expected nothing less of him.

"Fuck," I said, pressing my forehead to my reflection. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

***

I left soon after that. I had to be in Berlin by five o'clock at the latest, and suddenly I was glad that I had an excuse to go back. When I'd emerged from the bathroom, Till had asked me how I'd liked my haircut. I mumbled something, unable to look him in the face. I was so sure that he knew what I'd been doing, and I felt filthy-dirty to have wanked off over him in his own bathroom. At the same time, it was a sexy kind of filthy-dirty, so I couldn't feel bad about it forever. The guilt lasted for as long as it took me to get to the station, and then I thought of him on his knees for the entire journey home.

***

Flake looked up as I let myself into the apartment. He was reading a Western music magazine with a Pink Floyd interview advertised on the cover. No doubt he wanted to tell me about something he'd just read, but instead he stared at me, perplexed.

"Something's different," he said.

"Not really." I dropped my bag by the door and wandered into the kitchen. I checked the fridge. "We're out of milk. We should go to the shop on the way to Aljoscha's, don't you think?"

"What is it?" Flake stood in the doorway, his magazine forgotten. "Did you sleep with him?"

"That's none of your business," I said. "I'm having a coffee. Without milk. Want one?"

He shook his head. "It is my business. What about Aljoscha? What about the band? What about -"

"What about me being happy for once?" I snapped. I banged the jar of coffee down onto the table and realised that my hands were shaking. "Shit. Fuck. Sorry. I'm sorry."

Flake came closer, wide-eyed. I don't think he'd ever seen me as anything but happy and smiley. It was probably as much of a shock for him as it was for me.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Of course." I opened a drawer and grabbed a spoon, and then shovelled a couple of heaps of coffee into a mug. "I'm just tired. That's all."

"Maybe you shouldn't see him anymore."

I laughed, but it was a hollow sound. "Till or Aljoscha?"

"Till." Flake edged closer, as if he was afraid that I would lash out. "Honestly, Paul. You're like a different person when you come back from seeing him."

I stared into the mug at the coffee granules. "A bad person?"

"No. Of course not. Just… different."

"He makes me feel different. He looks at the world differently."

"But it's not our world," Flake said, softly.

"It could be. He's a drummer. You know how we seem to need a new drummer every few months -"

Flake shook his head and frowned. "Are you insane? Just apart from the fact that he's a country mouse -"

"I wish you wouldn't call him that."

He sighed as if the whole conversation had been started specifically to annoy him. "Paul, you can't think that it would work! What is it, you want the drama of asking your lover if your other lover can join his band?"

"Till is not my lover," I said automatically. I turned my back to pour boiling water into the mug, glad of the distance the action brought. I didn't want Flake to see that I was blushing, but he wasn't stupid.

"He will be. I'm not fucking blind. I know you. I've seen you like this before."

I ran my hands through my hair. "I don't know what to do."

"That's it!" Flake snapped his fingers at me. "That's what's different. Your hair. My God, you let him cut your hair."

"Yes. It's not a crime, is it?"

He looked hurt. "No. It's just that you usually ask me to do it."

I stirred the coffee. "Flake, are you jealous?"

"Yes," he said simply. "Of course I am. You've been my closest friend for four years, and now I see you obsessed with this guy. You keep on doing this. You find someone and idolise them, put them on a pedestal, and then when the intensity wears off, you move on to the next thing."

I was horrified. "I'm not like that at all."

"You are," Flake said quietly. "You know you are."

I bowed my head. Deep down, I knew he was right. "I don't mean to do it. Honestly, I don't. But Flake, he's different. He's really different."

He gave me a sad, pitying look. "That's what you always say."

I wasn't sure how to take this. I could see his point. Often I would cry on his shoulder over something that hadn't worked out for precisely the reasons he'd just lectured me on, and so I asked, "Are you worried about me? That I'll get hurt again?"

"No," said Flake, brutally honest. "I'm worried about him."


	4. lovely on the water

It was the end of summer. In Berlin, the change seemed to happen overnight. Flake complained of the cold one evening, and soon the oil-heater was on all the time. We rearranged the furniture in the living room. The balcony with its louvered doors was great in spring and summer, but as soon as autumn came around, it was a liability. Whoever sat on the couch had to protect themselves from the draught by piling all the cushions up into a barricade. Flake tacked big sheets of plastic over the gap, but the cold still crept in.

Till telephoned on Wednesday. Mindful of what Flake had said, and all too aware of my mindless desire to take him to bed and fuck him, I told my first lie. I said that Emil was poorly; I couldn't possibly leave town.

"Oh, no. What does he have?" Till asked, concerned.

I flailed around for a childhood illness. "Whooping cough."

Opposite me in his usual chair, Flake slapped his hand to his forehead.

"My God." Till sounded really worried, now. "That's awful. Paul, I'm so sorry. I'll let you go. I won't bother you. Your poor child."

There was no way I could undo the lie. I made vague, appropriate noises of parental fear and then hung up as fast as I could, and then sat on the couch staring at the phone.

"That was a bit too much," Flake said, helpfully. "You could have just told him you were busy."

I put the phone on the floor and stood up. "Shut it. I'm going to have a bath."

I did that a lot in the first week or so of autumn. Have a bath, I mean. There was something very comforting about running the tub full of water and then just lying back in it for hours on end. I would stay in until the bathwater was almost cold and the pipes clanked when asked to deliver more hot water from the tap. I would let my fingers go all crinkly, and inevitably I would drop at least one of Flake's magazines into the water. Well, he shouldn't leave them lying around in the bathroom, anyway.

A week passed. The city grew colder. The weather forecast said that a front was moving in from the Atlantic. Most of its power would have been spent by the time it reached us. It always amused me when the West got bad weather before we did. It seemed to justify a lot of things.

One evening, I was lying in the bath and contemplating the sight of my toes against the water stains on the white tub. Flake had moved his magazines to the other side of the bathroom, and I was too idle to get out and fetch one to read. Instead I rested my head on the slope of the tub and then allowed myself to sink lower. My chin touched the waterline. I took a deep breath and slid under. I could hear the water slosh into calm above me. I could hear my pulse speeding up. I wondered how long Till could hold his breath underwater. Longer than me. How long had I been under? Less than a minute.

I resurfaced and gasped, feeling weak. I rubbed my hands over my face and hair, and then jumped at the sudden knock at the door.

"Paul? Paul, are you decent?"

"I'm in the bath."

"Right." Flake opened the door and came in, holding out the phone as if it were a sacrificial lamb. He looked at me curiously, a searching gaze at my naked body beneath the water. "Here. It's Till."

I stared at him. No more country mouse, then. That was nice. I took the phone and carefully balanced it on my knees, holding the cable free of the water. I didn't want to be electrocuted before I'd had the chance to have this conversation.

"How's your son?" was his first question.

"He's fine," I said, feeling guilty. "Till. I have to tell you something."

"Whooping cough is horrible," he continued, awkwardly. He hadn't really heard what I'd said. "It sounds like they're dying, when they cough, with that wheeze… Shit, sorry. I didn't mean – I'm sorry, Paul. I'm not very good at this."

"You don't have to be," I said, miserable in the cooling bathwater. "Emil's fine. Really. He never had whooping cough in the first place."

There was a silence, and then Till said, "Did they misdiagnose it?"

I sank even lower into the water. "No. I lied. Emil was never sick at all."

Another silence, longer than the first. The line was so bad that I couldn't hear his breathing. I wondered if he'd hung up. I moved, and the water sloshed.

"Paul," he said, his voice soft, "are you in the bath?"

"Um, yeah."

He started to laugh. "You're strange."

"For having a bath?"

"Paul, if you don't want to see me, then you can tell me so. I won't be offended." He was still laughing, and I took this to be a good sign.

"I do want to see you," I said, "but…" I was going to tell him what Flake had said to me; about how I'd seen Aljoscha three times since our last weekend together and how it was getting harder for me to face bedding him when I wanted Till instead; and then I decided that I would sound like an idiot and a stupid idiot at that, and instead I said, "Sod it. I'll come first thing tomorrow."

He stopped laughing, but his voice was still rich. "I'll look forwards to it."

"You're not angry that I lied to you?" I asked, wondering.

"No. Why should I be?"

It was only after I'd hung up, got out of the bath and was halfway through getting dressed that I realised what he'd meant with his last sentence. He'd expected me to lie to him, and that's why he wasn't angry. He'd expected it.

And that hurt. A lot.

It also made me want to never lie to him again.

Clever bastard.

***

The autumn had not yet come to Hohen Viecheln. I thought it was odd that the city had changed so quickly, and yet the countryside remained still caught in a dream of summer. From the train I noticed the premonition of winter – a tractor ploughing the earth, the trees beginning to turn red and yellow – but the sky was still the same shade of impossible blue as I walked across the field to his house.

I went around to the back and dumped my bag on the porch. His towel was on the rocking chair, and the door to the kitchen was half open. I considered going inside to make coffee, so I wouldn't have to see him naked when he came out of the water. I had the brief, hilarious mental image of me leaping on him, panting with lust, and it was so ridiculous that I decided that I could cope with this after all.

Till waved to me from the lake, and so I went down to say hello.

"You can come in, you know," he said with a smile. "It won't kill you."

I wrinkled my nose. "It looks cold."

He laughed. "It's not. It's warmer in here than it is standing on the shore."

"You're making it up. Look," and I pointed along the bank to where a couple of mallards sat on the grass with their heads tucked back under their wings, "even the ducks refuse to go in. It must be bloody freezing."

"Honestly, it's not."

Now he looked serious and appealing, and as I'm spectacularly gullible at times, I said, "Oh, bloody hell, all right," and kicked off my shoes and socks, and then started to undress. I dropped my clothes onto the grass. I could feel him looking at my body. I was a skinny, pale, freckled thing, and so I was reluctant to take off my shorts. I wasn't as comfortable with nudity as he was, and I hoped that he wouldn't think less of me for this.

The mud oozed between my toes. On the surface it was slimy with a thin film of green weed, and bobbled with worm casts. It was chilly until my feet sank deeper into the mud, when it became warm and squishy and not unpleasant. I advanced a few yards further, gasping at the icy lick of the lake at my feet and ankles. I waded beyond the reed-bed and looked down.

"Leeches," I said, pointing into the wavering shallows. "I can see them. I'm not going in. Leeches!"

"They won't kill you, either."

"How do you know? Look at them. Ugh!"

"For God's sake, Paul." He sounded amused. "If you don't want to swim, then you don't have to. It's not a big deal."

"I don't want you thinking I'm some kind of pussy."

He gave me a funny look. "Oh, I'd never think that."

Before I had time to decide what he meant, I waded out a little further. The floor of the lake shelved quite dramatically here, and suddenly I was plunged from a foot of water into what felt like an abyss. I bellowed with shock. It was absolutely fucking freezing.

Till trod water a safe distance away and laughed so hard he scared the ducks into flight.

"Ah! You bastard!" I yelled, thrashing about to regain my balance. "You fucking liar! It's cold!"

He rolled over like a porpoise, still laughing, giving me a glimpse of his thighs and arse, the muscles long and bunched and powerful. I gawped and forgot to tread water, and then caught myself before I went under.

"Fuckwit!" I shouted, and chased him with my feeble front crawl. He turned to laugh at me, paddling backwards. Even with little effort he could outstrip me, so I splashed water at his face. He splashed back, and we mucked about for a while until the chill had gone from my skin and I was no longer freezing, but merely cold.

Till swam to my side, and we sort of drifted together. It was a strange sensation, having him so close with the lake lapping at our skin. I was glad that the water was cold, but even so I knew that it wouldn't be long before arousal pulled enough to give me a hard-on.

A flight of birds skid-landed on the lake. I paddled around to watch them. There was a lot of tail-waggling and wing-flapping going on. One of the birds had a crest-like thing on its head, so I said with authority, "A grebe!"

"Nope," Till smiled, obviously despairing of my inability to recognise even the most common of birds. "It's a moorhen. The grebes have all gone."

I felt disappointed. "Where?"

He shrugged. "South. Somewhere warmer. They only come here to breed and rear their young. Then comes winter, and they fly away."

"That's sad," I said, drawing too many comparisons.

"That's life."

I stared at the moorhen. It was a funny-looking thing, all black but for a red stripe on its head. I looked at Till. "But they'll come back next year?"

"If they survive the winter." He raised his eyebrows as if he was wondering why I was suddenly so interested in wildlife. "They're not like swallows. They don't all go at once. Some even stay and winter here, especially if their mate has died."

"They must get lonely."

He held my gaze for a moment longer, and then said, "We really shouldn't put human emotions onto birds or animals. It's much simpler for them. Come on."

He swam away from me, and I watched the water and sunlight shine from his skin and I nearly groaned aloud. Instead I ducked my head underwater and peered through the murky haze of the lake to the mud and green weed beneath me. Things shone from the silt as the water rippled and let in the sunlight.

I came up for air and then went under again, dragging myself down into the warmer water incubating near the muddy floor. The shiny things were tin cans and glass bottles. I thought they were dangerous, lying there. Somebody – or rather, Till - could cut his foot open. I grabbed a piece of wood and batted at the nearest tin, trying to move it away. The silt stirred up, and I exhaled a burst of bubbles from my nose when I felt something stab into my finger.

I broke the surface and gasped hugely, floating for a moment and blinking at the daylight. I had water in my ears, and it made the world sound strange. I could hear Till splashing closer to me, and then he said, "Paul? Are you all right?"

"There's rubbish in the lake," I said, almost outraged by the fact even though I regularly threw litter onto the streets of the city.

"Yes. Day-trippers on boats," he said with a moue of irritation. "But you can't clean up after everybody."

"It's dangerous. The – the ducks might get hurt." I waved my hand, lifting it from the water. The action brought a fresh throb of pain and I said, "Ow! What the fuck?"

Till caught my wrist and examined my hand. "A splinter," he said.

"A willow splinter," I said, trying to be funny.

He half-smiled. "No. Willow doesn't break like that. This is from something else. Hold still."

He came nearer and probed at the tiny injury with his free hand. It hurt with a dull, radiating heat, and my fingers fluttered involuntarily in his grasp. I've always been a coward as far as pain is concerned. To distract myself, I looked at him. His hair was in his eyes, black veiling grey, and his eyebrows were drawn deep in concentration. His mouth looked soft. He hadn't shaved. There was something vaguely barbaric about his appearance, and despite the stupid pain of the splinter, I felt my body respond to his closeness.

Desperate to stave off embarrassment, I said suddenly, almost hysterically, "Flake says that you only get a splinter if you've told a lie."

"You did tell a lie," Till reminded me.

"Yes." I winced, making a silent 'ouch' as he pinched the skin surrounding the splinter to force it out. "But then I told you the truth."

"Then this will come out easily enough, won't it?"

Another sharp pain, hot enough to bring tears to my eyes, and then Till grunted in satisfaction and let me go. "See? Got it." He rolled the splinter from his fingers to sit harmlessly in the centre of his palm.

I eyed it with horror. "That's not a splinter, that's a fucking branch."

He smiled, and let it drop into the water to float away. I shrank from it, clutching my injured finger, and then I cursed as I realised that I was bleeding.

Till chuckled and drifted closer, taking my wrist again. "It's only blood."

"Yeah, my blood. Bastard splinter," I grumbled, and then with a jolt of awareness I realised that he was going to suck my finger clean. I had a brief, sexy image of how it would be; and then before he could do it, I wrenched my hand away.

He stared at me, bewildered and a little upset by my reaction.

"Well. That's – I mean…" I had absolutely no idea what to say, and so I forced myself to laugh, and then I turned my head and examined the blood beading on my finger. "Fuck. It hurts, you know? It really does."

Till put out his hand towards me. "Let me help?"

I laughed again. "No, no. It's okay. Um. I'll – Maybe I'll get out now."

"Oh." He turned away, but not before I saw his expression, and it was one of disappointment. "Be careful," he added, not looking back at me, "the reeds closest to the shore are quite sharp when your feet are wet."

I nodded, and then swam past him in a slow, pathetic dogpaddle. My body felt heavy. I was afraid that I'd missed an opportunity, but I was even more afraid of reading him wrongly. I didn't know if he was upset or relieved. Disappointment can mask both emotions. It seemed easier for me to run away.

***

He was right. The reeds were sharp, and they lashed at my soles, forcing me to lift my feet. I hopped, awkward and laughable, and then fled towards the house. I pulled a towel from my bag and went inside, blotting the water from my body. I stripped off my shorts and in a burst of anger at my own stupidity, I kicked them across the floor. I wrapped the towel around my waist and sat down on the bed, staring blindly at the join between floor and wall.

Five minutes later he followed me in. He was wrapped in his towel, too, but he was still wet. Water ran off him in rivers. He bristled with it, water as a defence; but when he spoke, he sounded nervous and uncertain:

"Paul. Why did you lie?"

I looked up. His face was red. I thought he was angry.

"Why didn't you want to come last week? Why did you leave so quickly a fortnight ago, after I cut your hair? And just now – why did you -"

I shook my head, and decided, at last, to be honest with him. "Because I want you too much, and I don't know how you feel about it. About me, I mean. Because I have enough things in my life that trouble me, and I don't need one more. And because I really don't want to freak you out, because I really like you, and not just in that way. It's just that liking you in that way is becoming a bit of an obsession at the moment. But it's okay, it'll pass."

I was brave enough to look back up at him. He was standing in the doorway and staring at me in astonishment. I tried to give him a reassuring smile: "Hey. It's not that bad. I know I've had dreadful taste in men so far, but I kind of thought that you would be the exception to the rule."

"You said there was only Aljoscha." His voice was trembling.

"There was."

"Was?"

I caught the intonation. He was asking. No: he was pleading. My breath left my body in a silent gasp of joy. I lifted my hand and beckoned him closer, amazed and touched and utterly thrilled when he came. Over the threshold, into his own bedroom, closer to his bed where I sat preening like a king.

"Is this mutual?" I asked, certain that it was but still wanting to hear it.

Till nodded. "I think so. This is… different for me."

"For me, too." I couldn't help myself: I grinned. God, I was such a smug bastard. I felt vindicated. It felt great. And I wanted to feel him in my arms. "Come here," I said, shifting sideways on the bed. "Sit down."

He was suddenly shy, murmuring a soft denial.

"C'mon," I said, reaching out for the edge of the towel. I wanted to look at him again. "I've seen you before."

"It's different."

"You're one of the most shameless people I know!"

He shook his head. Tiny droplets of water rained down on me. I laughed; caught hold of the towel and tugged at it.

"Paul -"

He was right. It was different. I was looking at him in an entirely different way. Before, I'd looked at him with admiration, with the knowledge that he was my friend. Now it was purely with desire, and it startled me with its simplicity.

Till hung his head and wouldn't meet my gaze no matter how hard I tried to get him to look at me. It was so different to Aljoscha's brazenness, and it charmed me completely. It made me feel like a giant.

"You're so sexy," I said, putting out a hand to touch him. I brushed my fingers over his belly, over the silver and pink cobwebby scars, feeling the change from flesh to scar tissue to the roughness of hair, and feeling his muscles flinch from the caress.

He laughed, disbelieving and breathless; and when I moved my hand to his flank and brought him closer, he didn't resist.

His cock stirred. I nuzzled at it, my nose and cheeks wet from the water droplets that clung to his pubic hair and that slid down the crease between his thighs and torso. He smelled clean. He tasted of the lake, his skin chill, and when I licked him, he shivered as if he was cold.

His erection grew stronger between my lips, on my tongue. It was a nice feeling. I encouraged more, my hands cupping his arse to bring him closer, the check and balance for the moment when he allowed need to kick in and started to thrust into my mouth.

It came to me then that this was the exact opposite of the fantasies I'd been running through my head for the past fortnight; but I didn't care. There was something about this that was almost beyond lust.

Almost. But not quite.

He came silently, shuddering open-mouthed. It surprised me. I thought he would make a lot of noise. He withdrew from me, shy again, but I caught his wrist and urged him down onto the bed. We lay together, me bold in my touches while Till looked at me with wonder and stupefied desire.

"What do you want to do?" he whispered.

I liked being asked what I wanted. It meant that I had a choice. I was swamped by the possibilities and the power of it all. I wondered if he'd let me do everything that I wanted to do with him. Somehow, I knew that he would.

"I want to fuck you," I said.

There was a moment of blankness, a sort of incomprehension, and then he said, softly and suddenly as if he'd only just understood, "Oh. Yes. Please, yes."

His eyes were huge. He was shivering, continuous tremors riding through him like an orgasm. I was envious of this, not for one moment imagining that he could be nervous or afraid. I recognised it instead as desire, and so I pressed close to him, throwing off my towel so we could touch, naked. He put his arms around me and crushed tight, the heat radiating from him like a furnace.

The whole situation was completely surreal. I had the insane urge to giggle, but I didn't dare to do it in case I upset him. Our breathing seemed very loud in the confines of his room, and I felt a bit dizzy. Too excited, I suppose. It made me clumsy and eager.

"Have you got anything - you know -?"

He gazed up at me, bewildered. "What?"

"Lube. Do you have any? I don't want to hurt you." I winced. It was so unromantic, but it was necessary.

"I – oh. Uh. No. No, I don't." Till shook his head, dark hair like a halo on the pillow: a martyr to my desire. "It's okay. Do it anyway."

"Are you -"

"I'm sure." He pulled me down on top of him. "I want you."

It was impossible. I couldn't do it. He was so tight and so tense that I couldn't even penetrate him with a finger. His expression had gone from horny to panicked in under thirty seconds, and even when I wriggled him around and kissed the nape of his neck and licked my way down his spine, telling him to relax, he couldn't do it.

I sat back on my heels and sighed.

"Keep trying," he said.

"No."

He rolled over and gave me a direct look. "You don't want me."

"Believe me, I do. Very much."

"Then keep trying."

"You're a stubborn bastard, aren't you?" I said, but kindly. "Till, ordering me to fuck you won't actually end with me doing it. I love hearing the words 'fuck me, Paul, you great stallion', but only when we're both enjoying it. You look like you'd rather have teeth pulled than have me inside you."

He stared up at me. He has this sombre, mournful way of staring, sometimes: and it always makes me want to touch him, tickle him, jolt him back into our world, because I can't bear it that he looks so lost.

"Have you still got that pound of butter in the fridge?" I asked, ingenuous.

Till blinked at me, and then laughed. "Yes. Fuck, you idiot! Just make sure you use that and not the honey."

I pressed my weight against the length of his body in a carefully orchestrated undulation. It made him groan and me gasp, and then I said, "The honey would stick us together. Is that such a bad thing?"

He considered. "Maybe not. It would be messy, though."

"I like messy things."

I kissed him, then: kissed him for the first time, uncertain of how he would take it. Some men, I've learned, can take all kinds of depravity done to their bodies, but they can't take a kiss; and other men fall in love with kisses, and become greedy for them. Till was like this. He would drown in a kiss, go under so deep that when he resurfaced, he would be disorientated and bewildered and grateful for whatever rhythm joined us together.

And then he would bite my lips as if he could take back all the kisses he'd given me, not because he resented giving them, but because he wanted to do it over again. If Flake believed that there were a finite number of people he could attract, then Till believed that there were a finite number of kisses he could bestow, and although I tried to break him of this belief, he persisted in it; and I learned to savour each kiss he gave me in case it was the last.

I'd thought he'd be immune to flattery. I was wrong about that. I was wrong about a lot of things, but I can admit to my mistakes – or assumptions. I liked admitting my mistakes to Till, especially when they concerned him, because he would look at me wide-eyed and sometimes he'd laugh, and other times he would frown and glower and then pull me into his arms and we'd kiss shamelessly. Yes, he liked flattery, he loved it, but only the sincerest kind, and if words were accompanied by actions then he loved it all the more.

I told him I adored him, and I did. That first time, I made him laugh into blissful submission, and then I could take him. He said it didn't hurt, but I'm sure it did. It was difficult, sometimes, for me to differentiate between his expressions of pleasure and pain. The two were so close for him, I learned; too close for my peace of mind at times. There were things he would ask of me that I couldn't give, but with a little imagination a compromise was reached, and that seemed to be enough, to be more than enough, and we were content with that.

***

There were occasions over that weekend when I had to stop myself from saying _I love you_. A tiny phrase, a stupid phrase, but what trouble it causes!

Flake had been right. It was too easy for me to be affectionate, to pour my attention over somebody just for the pleasure of seeing them glow. I suppose I was like a spotlight or something, shining now on one person and then on another, and while the light was on them, my lovers would unfurl like seedlings and in time would offer me a flowering of trust.

But then I'd get bored and move on, or would shine the light back along the seedlings, and I'd see what I'd done, and I'd feel guilty.

When I said I loved somebody, I meant it at that moment. I didn't mean it forever. Just as I'm sure that when people call on God when they're having sex, they're not actually praying to the Almighty or expressing a desire to join the clergy. It's a phrase that rolls from the tongue; it's something to say. And I say 'I love you'.

I know I shouldn't. Like so many other things, it's got me into trouble a few times. And knowing this, I was desperate not to say it to Till. I didn't want to say anything to him that I didn't mean.

I was especially circumspect whenever he asked about Aljoscha. Oh, he was very delicate about it, very subtle, but new lovers are aware of every nuance of tone, and I knew exactly what he wanted to know even if he couldn't quite bring himself to ask me outright. His body language also gave him away. He would lie on his side and look at me; as if afraid that, if he turned away, then I would vanish and leave him, and then he would ask, probe, very gently, taking his cues from whatever inanity I was babbling about at the time.

I talked in short order about my family, my father, his studies, academia, music, and my love of learning, fostered by my father's esoteric nature.

"What did you learn from Aljoscha?" Till asked.

I grinned. "How to have an active imagination."

"In bed?"

"You've seen him," I said. "He's twice my age, and he's not exactly – Well. Let's just say I imagine someone else when I'm with him."

It was the only time I saw him blatant in his curiosity. "Who?"

I smiled, wanting to tease; but I couldn't. "You."

Till rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. He seemed pleased.

"Don't you want to know what I imagine you doing?" I leered.

He gave me the sweetest look I'd ever seen. "No," he said. "It's enough to know that you think of me."

I was taken aback by that. I was used to lovers who made demands on me. To have found one that didn't was something of a novelty, but it also made me feel insecure. Maybe he didn't really want me as much as I thought he did, or as much as I wanted him. It made me evaluate things differently. I couldn't put him on the pedestal I'd already built for him, because now it turned out that he had feet of clay, and he wasn't ashamed to let me see them. And I, surprisingly, didn't flee from this show of humanity. In fact, I wanted more of it.

***

By Sunday night, I'd lost count of the number of times we'd made love. I was usually so good at keeping track, but not anymore. Till was a remarkable sensualist. He could find pleasure in anything once his mind was on that track. His arousal, even at low level, became a tangible thing surrounding us, magnetic and snapping with tension. Even something simple - just the way he moved, the turn of his head towards me – anything and everything became incredibly erotic, and I would fall into the trap each time, greedy for him; and he was just as eager to glut himself on me.

It was a weird sexual symbiosis, a constant chain of need that we fed over and over. I'd been eager and grasping for a new lover many times in the past, but not quite to the intensity that Till engendered in me. I did wonder, once, if this would be the shortest relationship I'd ever have, because I couldn't imagine how it could sustain itself with this much heat, this much ferocious tenderness.

The thought disturbed me enough to make me look at my watch. I had the vague idea that I should be somewhere else. I stared at it for a while before I made sense of the time. "Shit," I mumbled, too tired and satisfied to bother panicking, "I missed my train."

Till nuzzled against me. "Get the next one."

"That's at six o'clock tomorrow morning."

"Oh." He lifted his head from the pillow and gave me a sleepy look. "What time do you have to start work?"

"Seven."

He put his head down again. We lay curled together, unmoving. Five minutes later he said, "I can drive you back to the city, if you like."

"Yeah," I said vaguely. "There might be a later train from Schwerin."

"No. I meant that I'll drive you back to Berlin."

I turned my head and frowned at him. "It's a six-hour drive there and back."

"So?"

"So no, you won't drive me back to Berlin."

"I would if you wanted me to. It's not a problem."

I climbed on top of him. "Stop it. You're too generous."

"Am I?" Till looked hurt. "It's not a bad thing, is it?"

I hesitated. "Sometimes it can be."

"I like being generous," he said, settling his arms around my waist to hold me still. "I'm not generous with everybody, you know."

"Especially not with yourself."

He frowned. "What do you mean? I'm too indulgent with myself."

I didn't want to start an argument, so I let it go. That's one of my indulgences, I've realised: letting things go. A bad indulgence, as it turned out, but I was far from knowing that then. That night I smiled and brushed the tip of my nose over the scars on his face, and he laughed, and that was the end of the discussion.

***

At half past seven the next morning, the phone rang. Till rolled out of bed to answer it, and I spread out on the mattress with a warm sigh. My moment of bliss was short-lived. Till pulled the blankets off me and said, "It's for you. It's Flake."

I grumbled and went to pick up the phone. "What?"

"So you're not coming home, then?" Flake asked.

"I can't deal with sarcasm at this time of morning," I said. "I missed the last train, okay? It was a genuine mistake. I didn't mean to do it."

Flake snorted. "Right."

"It's true, Flake," I sighed. "Come on, what else has happened?"

"Aljoscha's been around four times looking for you. I'm not going to bullshit for you anymore, Paul. I'm not doing it. You'll have to get another fucking alibi."

"Flake – I never asked you to lie for me in the first place."

"No. You just asked me to say nothing. Well, how the fuck can I say nothing when he's round here asking where you are every five minutes, when he knows damn well that I know where you are and who you're with -"

"Tell him I'm with a girl."

"He doesn't believe me. You've always put music first, Paul. You've never missed practice before. Not even for a cheap fuck."

"Till is not a cheap fuck," I snapped, incensed.

"Sort this out," Flake said, and I could tell that he was really fed up. "I'm not doing it for you."

He hung up. I stood there and listened to the dead line, the distant crackle and faint taps of interference mechanical and human, and then I put down the receiver.

Behind me, Till said quietly, "It's good to know that I'm not a cheap fuck."

I felt very tired all of a sudden. "I don't think you're anything of the kind."

"High maintenance fuck," he suggested instead, coming into the living room.

"No." I tried to smile. "That's not you, either."

"Waste of time fuck."

I was startled by the viciousness in his tone. Helpless, I shook my head. "Christ, is that how you see yourself? No way."

"Well, what am I, then?"

It was a challenge; and like a coward, I avoided it. Instead I put my arms around him rather awkwardly and hugged him. He fidgeted, uncomfortable in the embrace. I knew he wanted an answer, but it was impossible for me to define what he was, what he meant to me.

"What the fuck," he suggested, and I laughed at that one.

"Country mouse," I said. "Maybe Flake was right. But the story got it wrong. The country mouse lures the town mouse to the country. You won't come to the town, will you? Not even if I asked."

Till squirmed out of my grasp and gave me a brief smile. "You've never asked me. And you won't. But that's not the issue here. What about you, town mouse? Are you going back? There's a train at nine-thirty."

"The hell with that," I said, deciding. "I'm staying."

We went back to bed and made love, slow and easy now, because anything more energetic would probably have killed us both. I didn't want to go back to Berlin. I didn't want to have to face Flake and Aljoscha. I wanted to stay in bed, wrapped around Till; I wanted to stay submerged in the narcotic of his sensuality.

When we were done, I pulled the sheets over my head and hid from the world. If I couldn't see it, then it didn't exist. Till rumbled with laughter and kissed me through the blanket. I stayed where I was, enjoying the way he shifted over me and against me as he reached for his cigarettes. He whispered an apology as he sat up. I mumbled a response and stroked the small of his back. He felt hot and damp, and I made lazy scribbles with a fingertip through the sheen of sweat on his skin.

After a moment, Till tugged the sheets down to my waist so he could look at me. He put the cigarette to my lips and I laughed, took a drag, and blew the smoke out over his hand. He smiled.

The telephone conversation with Flake played on my mind, connecting with a number of other thoughts that had presented themselves to me over the weekend. I wondered if Till really needed to know what he was to me, or if he'd asked only because he'd overheard what I'd said.

I wondered what I was to him. That was more dangerous. I try not to label myself by what I mean to other people, but there was something about him that made me want to belong. I didn't know what I wanted to belong to, though. To Till? To the band? To society in general?

He was cleverer than me. Maybe he had an answer where I had none. So I asked, eventually, "What is this?"

"I don't know," he said softly. "Do we need to define it?"

"Not really. I was just curious."

He concentrated on the cigarette, and didn't look at me. "I won't make demands on you, Paul, if that's what you're worried about."

"What if I want you to make demands?"

He turned his head to give me a brief look over his shoulder. "Do you?"

"Yeah. Okay." I settled myself against the pillows. "Go on."

Till stubbed out the cigarette and shuffled around slightly so I could see his face, but his body was mostly turned away from me. I didn't like that, and so I reached out to catch him and bring him close. He shook me off, but gently.

"Very well," he said at last, "what if I were to ask you to come and live here with me?"

Panic started flailing around in my belly. "That's impossible," I said quickly. "I work in Berlin, you know that. I can't commute from here."

"So quit your job." He was very reasonable about it; his voice was absolutely toneless. "Come and work with me. I'll teach you to weave."

My laughter sounded stupidly high-pitched. "I'd be crap at it."

"Actually, I think you'd be quite good. You have nimble enough fingers."

I was flattered, but still – "No," I said. "I'd hate it. I don't have the patience. You would kill me after a week and dump my body in the lake. No, Till."

He sighed. "Well, then: I want you to stop seeing Aljoscha."

"I can't do that, either. Not yet, anyhow."

"Then tell him about us."

I shook my head. This wasn't funny anymore. "I can't do that. It's -"

"Impossible?" Till supplied. His eyebrows lifted, his expression at once ironic and challenging. "See. That's why I won't make demands on you, because I already know your answers. And if I don't make demands, then at least that way I won't get hurt," and with that, he turned away again.

"Oh, shit," I said miserably, "now I feel fucking awful. I don't want to hurt you. I like you too much to do that."

His voice was muffled. "And I like you too much to – Well. It doesn't matter."

I sat up, kicking off the sheets. "Too much to – what? Till? What is it?"

"Nothing." He got up and started to dress. "There's a train in forty-five minutes' time. I'll drive you to the station."

I fell back onto the mattress and sighed, frustrated. I had the feeling that I'd missed something important, but I didn't ask him again. Instead I just lay there, determined that I wasn't going to catch that damn train. I would stay in his bed until he came back to me and finished the conversation.

He'd gone out into the kitchen. I heard the whirr of the coffee grinder, and then he came back to lounge against the doorframe. He had a mug of coffee in his hands. I took a sniff of the enticing dark sweet scent, and I groaned, rolling over so I could press my face to the pillow to smell his sweat and passion instead.

"Paul."

He came over and sat beside me. I could feel him looking down at me. I wanted to hold him, but if I made a grab for him then he'd probably spill the coffee and that wouldn't be very clever. I listened to him breathing. He was wondering what to say. He always breathes differently when he's lost for words, and then, when he finally does speak, it's either to say something really silly or something very important.

I waited. I wanted him to say something important.

"You talk in your sleep," he said, slowly and quietly. "You're always telling me to do things."

"I am?" I turned my head to squint up at him, and tried to remember my dreams of last night. I could only recollect something about missing the train, which had been real enough. "What sort of things?"

Till smiled. "You ask me to fetch stuff for you. To carry things from one place to another. And last night, you asked me to build you a house from willow." His smile turned sad: "And when I asked you why you wanted a house of willow, you said, 'So I can take it with me.'"

I looked away. It hurt too much. "What a stupid dream!"

He touched my shoulder. His hand was warm from holding the mug of coffee. He bowed his head, his fringe in his eyes, as he said: "I would, you know. If that was what you wanted. I would build you a house of willow."

"For God's sake, Till. It was just a dream." I felt absurdly exposed, and hated being so vulnerable. I made myself laugh at the idea; laughed like a fool at a joke that wasn't funny: "It would take you fucking ages to build a house. Years. And then the roof would leak when it rained."

He let go of me. "Yes. You're right. It's crazy."

"Yes."

"But not impossible."

***

All the way home, I tried very hard not to cry. I knew it was impossible, despite what he said. I could never have what I wanted most, because I never really knew what it was that I wanted, and I could only grasp concrete reality, not ideals. No matter how much I loved him, it would never be enough. I would always live in fear of the day I'd wake up and find myself bored with him. I couldn't hurt him like that, because I loved him enough that it would destroy me, too.

Nobody had offered to build me a house before. I wished I could remember the dream. I wished I hadn't laughed at him when he'd told me. A house I could take with me. Yes. That's what I wanted, and I'd rejected it when it was offered.

I couldn't stop the tears after that.


	5. the weaver and the factory maid

Flake knew, of course, even before I did. I don't know how he does it: how he knows so much. Maybe I was just too predictable.

"No," he said when I suggested that to him, "that's not it. Usually you're dreadfully predictable, but this time it's different. It's the unpredictability that gave you away."

"I can't even be consistent," I grumbled.

"Or inconsistent," Flake said with a smile. "You're consistently inconsistent. And now… You're different. The town mouse longs to be the country mouse. Or does he? Maybe he just longs for the country mouse, who is not a mouse at all, but a fox – cunning and red and hunted and beautiful."

I groaned, half anguished. "You have such a way with words."

"He's the poet," Flake said. "Perhaps I'm just a fabulist."

"Then what happens at the end of this story?"

He considered for a moment, fixing me with his gaze as he said, quite deliberately, "It's not a story. It's a fable. And the end depends on you."

I shook my head. "I don't know what to do."

"Tell him."

"Maybe I should tell Aljoscha, first."

Flake laughed. "Only you would be so upside-down that you would tell everybody else first, and Till last."

I waited until he got up from the couch to go to the kitchen, and then I said, "You were so angry with me on the phone. Why are you being so nice to me now?"

"Because you've made up your mind," Flake said, kindly. "I can't stand indecision, except in myself. Go and tell him."

***

I went. Four days had passed since I was last in Hohen Viecheln, but it felt like a lifetime. Did it always feel this way when one fell in love? I didn't know. I had forgotten. Maybe that was part of it, too: Whenever it happens, you forget everything and everyone who ever came before, so you can start again. Maybe that was the part I liked the most – being able to start again. Being able to make everything new and fresh and intoxicating.

I really was a coward. I vowed that, this time, I would see it through. I wouldn't run when the glitter wore off. How could it? Till wasn't glitter to begin with. This was a fool's errand for fool's gold, but at least there was equality in that.

The walk from the station to his house seemed interminable. There were cows in the field, so I had to go around the long way. One of the cows lumbered towards me, its breath huffing from its shiny wet nose. Its hide was dirty white splodged with black, the same type of cow that had chased me before. It had big dark eyes that peered at me over the hedge.

"Go away," I told it, feeling very brave for having addressed the beast.

The cow stared, and its ears flickered.

I carried on walking, grateful for the hedge that separated us but still keeping a wary eye on the animal as it followed me. After a few yards, the cow lost interest in me and stopped to rub its chin against the hedge, scratching itself. Then it moved away, lowing as it went.

I watched it go. I was really rather pleased that I hadn't run away screaming. Maybe it was the hedge that did it – a flimsy illusion of safety. I congratulated myself on my bravery and continued along the track to Till's house.

Despite the fact that I hadn't called ahead to let him know I was arriving, I knew he was in because I could hear a record playing. Bloody folk songs again. I grinned and went around to the back as usual and then stopped, shocked into stillness by what I saw.

A man was sitting in the rocking chair, tapping his fingers in time to the music. A young man, handsome in a pretty kind of way, with wide eyes and long hair dyed blond with a black stripe running through the middle. He looked like the cow in the field, and I feared him as much. I disliked him on sight, but didn't question why until later.

We looked at each other. He didn't get up. The song played on, until I walked over to the record player and lifted off the needle. In the silence that followed, I was aware of Till whistling inside the kitchen. He came out onto the porch and saw me, and saw the way I was looking at the skunk-striped man in his rocking chair, and then he seemed to diminish a little.

I felt guilty, as if I'd robbed him of some small happiness.

"This is Scholle," Till said by way of introduction. "Scholle, this is Paul. He's the guitarist with Feeling B. I told you about them."

It sounded so detached. I was ridiculously hurt, but forced myself to cross the grass and step up onto the porch. I couldn't force myself to shake hands with Scholle, though. "Crazy name," I said instead. "What's that all about, then?"

Scholle gave me a disinterested glance. "I play guitar, too."

"Great." My polite smile froze on my face. "You got a band?"

"Orgasm Death Gimmick."

"Cool name."

Conversation dried up after that. It was horrible. Painful. I walked to the far end of the porch and looked at the heap of finished baskets. I heard the creak of the rocking chair as Scholle levered himself out of it, and then a low-voiced exchange between him and Till.

I turned around and stared at the lake. A bird was floating on the water. Scholle came towards me, and then looked out to see what had caught my attention. He tilted his head as if this would help him see the bird more clearly, and then he said, confidently, "A moorhen."

I could see its crest, and its pale underbelly. "A grebe," I said viciously. "A great-crested grebe."

Scholle sniffed. "The grebes have all flown. That's a moorhen."

Before I could snap at him and make a fool of myself, Till came up behind us and put a hand on my shoulder. "Paul's right. It's a great-crested grebe. The only one here for winter this year. The mallards have been bullying him, but I think he'll be all right on his own."

He turned away and went back inside the house, leaving Scholle and I to look at one another in sudden silent empathy. I didn't think that I'd ever like him, but at that moment I realised we were closer to being friends than we were to being enemies.

***

Scholle left soon after that, but although the awkwardness lifted, some of the tension still remained. We sat on the grass and watched the grebe sail back and forth beyond the reed-beds. He was a handsome, elegant bird, his neck dipping as he moved, his crest sharply defined.

"I should have called," I said, by way of an apology.

"No." Till looked tired. "You can come here whenever you want. Please."

I nodded. We sat a moment longer, and then he crawled over to the record player and put the needle back to the start of the album. In the silence before the music began, he sat back on his heels and looked at me, but he didn't say anything.

We listened to the song. He drew the willow towards him and started to work. After a while, I brought him a mug of coffee and set it down beside him on the grass, and then I sat down behind him, my back against his. If I leaned into him, I could feel the play of muscle as he worked.

I said, "I love you."

He said nothing; just continued to weave, his movements in gentle counterpoint to the rhythm of the song. By the time the record ended and the needle slid across into the empty space to tap at the paper label, I'd almost forgotten that I'd said anything at all.

He stirred and stretched out his arms, wriggling his shoulders. I felt him turn to pick up the mug. The coffee must have been cold, but he didn't complain. Still he didn't say anything.

"Till?"

"You mustn't," he said finally. "It would be a disaster."

"Allow me to disagree."

"No. Nobody loves me." He was quite fierce about it.

"For fuck's sake!"

"You know what I am. What I'm like."

"Yes!" I snapped, finally turning to face him. "You're fucking stupid, that's what you are! Stupid and proud and stubborn and self-pitying and – and -"

"Don't." He held up his hands in surrender. "Paul, stop it."

I was silent.

"I told you. I'm chronically unfaithful. I can't help it; it just happens." He lowered his head, hid his expression from me, but his mouth was soft with unhappiness. "It doesn't matter how much I care for the other person – for you – it will still happen. You have to know this. Don't try to understand it, because I don't. Just… know that it will happen. I will cheat on you."

"With him?" I asked, meaning Scholle.

Till shrugged. "Maybe. If not with him, then with someone else. And then someone else again. A woman, a man, it makes no difference in the end. I am a faithless bastard."

I stared at him as sudden realisation dawned. "You think you're a failure because of it, don't you?"

"What?" He looked up at me, frowning.

I was certain of it, now. "Because you can't be faithful to a lover, you think it makes you a failure. I'm so stupid. Flake said the same thing to me a few weeks ago, but I didn't see it."

He looked bewildered and then surprised as I grabbed his arms. "I don't know what you're talking about, Paul."

"No. Neither do I," I said, but I was smiling – a little crazy, a little desperate, but it made sense to me. I just had to make him see the sense of it, too. "Listen: Flake said I was too free with my affections. I told him it was because I got bored. Boredom and infidelity… it's kind of the same thing," I said, giving him a little shake, trying to read his response from behind the veiled, wary expression in his eyes.

He turned his head. "Not really."

"They can be," I insisted. "What are you afraid of? What am I afraid of? Maybe that's the same thing, too. Do you want me to judge you, to tell you that you're a bad husband and father and friend? Because I don't want you to judge me, not in the way that Flake does, or Aljoscha, or Nikki, or anybody else I know."

His hands gripped my arms just above my elbows. I thought he'd try to get away from me, but instead he was holding on. He said softly, "You talk too much. You confuse me."

"Isn't it the job of the poet to make sense out of confusion?"

He smiled at the challenge. "Not always. Sometimes a poet must celebrate confusion."

"This isn't confusion. It doesn't have to be confusion." I let go of him; and slowly, he let go of me. "You said you were faithful to the things you created. You created this. You created us, here, now."

"Not entirely," he protested. "It was your decision, too."

I smiled. "Then at least remain true to half of it. I don't care about the rest. Do what you have to do, and allow me the freedom to do the same."

He laughed, and it was so close to tears; but laughter won, tinged with disbelief. "You're giving me permission to cheat? You're trusting me with your mistrust? God, we're a pair of fuck-ups."

"Yes. I know." I held out my hand. "Can't we just try?"

He thought about it, and then he took my hand and held tight.

"Yes," he said. "We can try."


End file.
